Utah Valley State College did not fall into a hole in the Earth's crust. Orem was not overwhelmed by locusts, frogs or, even, crickets.

Michael Moore came, spoke, soaked up the applause, collected his well-earned fee and left for the next stop on his Slacker Uprising Tour. There he will don the locally appropriate baseball cap and again make the argument that some folks in Utah County had been warning us was treading the line of treason:

Young people ought to get off their butts and vote.

It's hard to see why anybody has a problem with that.

The fuss and bother that preceded Moore to Utah was sadly based on a fear of ideas and dissent that is at least as un-American as anything you could find in his controversial anti-President Bush film "Fahrenheit 9/11" - even if you played it backwards at the wrong speed.

Whatever one thinks of Moore's politics, his films, his grooming habits or his use of the techniques of entertainment to address serious political issues, the man had one point that is unassailably true.

It was the anti-Moore folks who brandished threats of lawsuits, recall elections and budget cuts, as well as offering the reward of a serious amount of money, to get the date scratched from Moore's itinerary.

Nobody who supported Moore's appearance took that tack when the school, in search of "balance," imported right-wing radio gabber Sean Hannity. That's the difference between people who revel in a real marketplace of ideas and people who fear it.

And Moore was graciously positive about the whole fracas and its outcome. Despite all the opposition and threats, the student leaders stuck to their plans, which were neither vetoed by school administrators nor blocked by state officials. All that makes Utah, or at least a few Utahns, look pretty good.

At the same time, Moore could feel he had received the highest compliment that can be paid to a person's ideas - an attempt to stop those ideas from being heard. Silly, pointless ideas, after all, don't get a rise out of people. Only powerful ones do.

Moore could feel a bit slighted, though, that the person perceived as best suited to balance his presentation was not a general or a diplomat or a thoughtful academic. Instead he drew a wind-up ideologue whose deep reverence for the office of the presidency will evaporate the minute it is held by a Democrat.

Game to Mr. Moore. Set and match to Utah Valley State College.