Happy Belated Columbus Day!
You better not even acknowledge Columbus Day — It has been cancelled!
Columbus Day was once celebrated to commemorate the anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the Americas on October 12, 1492. According to History.com, it became a federal holiday in 1937 and for many Americans, it is a time to honor the achievements of Italian-Americans.
You may note that there was no indication that anyone celebrates the violence that ensued, nobody celebrates the death of anyone who died resulting from Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the Americas. What people celebrate is the fact that Columbus’ arrival sparked the beginning of Europeans settling in the Americas. It bridged the gap between the Old World and the New World. It brought modernity to the area where you are likely sitting and reading this article.
To the modern day individual, fueled by outrage, celebrating the positive side of any historical event is simply out of the question. Christopher Columbus brought a host of diseases to the Americas, his arrival marked the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade, and, as a result, millions of people died from disease and murder.
All of this is terrible. Any person given such evidence would say that we can certainly not celebrate these things. The creation of America is great and all, it provided us with, er, America — but look at all the bad things that happened too. If you are a logical person, you would assume that all of the Americas were devoid of such terror, violence, and murder before the arrival of the evil Europeans. You would assume that there was no slavery, no murder, no conquering, just peace. Otherwise why would people be outraged at celebrating Columbus?
Draw a logical conclusion for goodness sake! Columbus Day is bad because Europeans brought with them bad things. This can only be bad if before the Europeans came, the bad things did not exist or at least barely existed.
Unfortunately, Europeans did not invent murder, rape, conquering, or slavery. Those inventions were all in the Americas long before Europeans got here.
The truth is, as it always seems to be, rather inconvenient. Actually, it’s really inconvenient.
The Americas, with their many indigenous tribes were not one cohesive unit. The Native American tribes were also not all the same as we may be led to believe by the suggestion that we ought to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day to replace Columbus Day. Even in present day America, there are currently five hundred and seventy-four distinct tribes recognized by the federal government according to the National Congress of American Indians.
In the same way that it would be ludicrous to consider all white people or all black people as belonging to the same cultural background, it is just as ludicrous to group all Native Americans together — But we actually do group all white people into one group and we do the same with all black people, so I guess the lunacy is, at the very least, consistent. But I digress.
Additionally, all indigenous people were not peaceful lovers with deep respect for one another, many of the tribes were known for being extremely violent. You can read about the unequivocal evidence that some native tribes were cannibalistic in an article by the Seattle Times from September 7, 2000.
Native tribes engaged in war with one another, they held each other as slaves, they raped one another, they conquered one another. Land changed hands and it was not done so through real estate agents and signed contracts if you can believe it.
And this article could be a whole condemnation about why Native Americans are also bad and therefore we cannot determine the gradations of badness — but that is not what we need to discuss. Any person worth their salt knows deep in their heart that Europeans did not invent badness. The mentality of taking land through violence and war was commonly practiced at the time and is even practiced now. Look no further than the Taliban’s recent conquest in Afghanistan.
The problem here is much deeper. Honoring Columbus, the man who brought modernity to the New World, is to honor the victor.
You can call Columbus stupid, you can call his discovery happenstance, but with all the technology you have now, I challenge you to hop on a boat and navigate from North America to Europe — I believe that very few of us, including myself, could accomplish such a feat. I would not even dare to try.
Columbus did this. He navigated the route with antiquated technology, utilizing the stars, and yes, I am sure some “luck” was involved. But it also took courage. It took someone setting out to accomplish something and then doing it.
Was that not once what the American spirit was all about?
The American Dream, the promise of America, as I have wrote before, is about freedom. Freedom to fail and freedom to succeed. Because without the freedom to fail, there cannot be freedom to succeed.
America was once the meritocratic capital of the world. Success stories fueled the ambitions that kept citizens hardworking, dreamy-eyed, and patriotic.
But now no more. We no longer honor greatness, rather we honor victimhood. We much rather pay our respects not to the man who beat the odds and overcame all the obstacles stacked against him, we do not view a Jeff Bezos as being an American success story, we portray him as a villain. A man so wealthy that we have been trained to hate him. Instead who do we spend the entire summer of 2020 honoring? The likes of George Floyd. Or other characters representative of the victim.
And just like the Native Americans, we do not look at George Floyd for who he was, we simply look at the fact that he died. We do not talk about his drug use, his criminal history, we do not mention that he was not like any regular person. He was a deeply troubled man, addicted to drugs, who had a violent background, and who met his end in a fashion that really is not all too shocking. A criminal had a run in with the police that resulted in his death.
This is not to say that we should celebrate the officer who has been charged with killing him— it is simply to ask, why is it that we have murals and statues of George Floyd around every major city, yet we do not honor men of distinction in this same way?
Why is it that Jeff Bezos is a villain and George Floyd is a hero? Why not put up statues and murals of those people who attained great success and can serve as role models for future generations?
The answer is cut and dry.
Capitalism, the idea that you have the ability to earn based on your worth, is falling out of style. It is being replaced by some Socialist/Marxist blend, the idea that society is comprised of two camps, the victim and the victimizer and as such we must destroy the victimizer, for he is the root of the victim’s woes.
Apply the “victim” and “victimizer” designation to any situation in history and you can determine who the leftists will support. Columbus, the “victimizer,” is hated and the indigenous people, the “victims,” are revered and beloved.
This hatred of Columbus has nothing to do with what he did, it has to do with his accomplishments and the fact that he had any.
There is no nuance in the simple assessment of the world which denotes that every person and every group falls into one camp of being either good or bad, either victim or victimizer. There is no deep thinking brought into the conversation. If there was, the indigenous people would be viewed for who they were, a complete revision of history would not be necessary and the same could be done for a man like Columbus.
In the year 1492, you can imagine that things were a bit different in the Americas. You can imagine that the standard we adhere to today of decency was not in play. If you are an understanding individual, one who recognizes that even you are not perfect, you can recognize that Columbus was a man of his time. He discovered the New World and bridged a path between Europe and the Americas and that is an accomplishment. You can discuss what he did and why you might not condone some of the actions he took or the actions taken by his contemporaries, but you ought to do so in the context of the time.
Looking back on how COVID was handled about a year ago, we kept children out of schools, away from social interactions, from their friends, from sports, from after school activities, all in the name of a virus that killed maybe up to 3% of all people who contracted it.
As you sit there judging Columbus, you may want to consider that we ourselves are certainly not free of sin — judge him how you would like to be judged. In the context of the situation, maybe you were not as bad as it looks, and maybe Columbus was not either.
