Few holidays are as \u201cpolitically incorrect\u201d as is the day that Americans reserve to commemorate the birthday of Christopher Columbus. Such is the ferocity of the smear campaign to which Columbus has been subjected for decades that he has been made into a villain among villains in the rogues\u2019 gallery of history.<\/p>\n
Geoffrey Symcox, of the Medieval and Renaissance Center at the University of California at Los Angeles, says of Columbus that while a \u201cbrilliant mariner,\u201d he was nevertheless \u201can unrelenting social climber and self-promoter who stopped at nothing\u2014not even exploitation, slavery, or twisting Biblical scripture\u2014to advance his ambitions [.]\u201d He continues: \u201cThe fact that Columbus brought slavery, enormous exploitation or devastating diseases to the Americas\u201d has always been ignored by scholars and laity alike, for all that mattered is that he was \u201cthe great bringer of [the] white man\u2019s civilization to the benighted idolatrous American continent.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNative American\u201d activist Ward Churchill\u2014the same disgraced University of Colorado professor who made national news when he referred to the thousands who lost their lives on September 11, 2001 as \u201clittle Eichmanns\u201d\u2014wrote that Columbus Day celebrations rank \u201cvery high\u201d among those \u201cexpressions of non-indigenous sensibility\u201d that \u201ccontribute to the perpetuation of genocidal policies against Indians [.]\u201d<\/p>\n
Russell Means, an American Indian activist, once said that next to Columbus, Hitler <\/em>\u201clooks like a juvenile delinquent.\u201d And during the 500th<\/sup> year anniversary of Columbus\u2019s discovery of the New World, the National Council of Churches released a statement imploring Christians to abstain from celebrating.\u00a0 \u201cWhat represented newness of freedom, hope, and opportunity for some,\u201d the statement read, \u201cwas the occasion for oppression, degradation and genocide for others.\u201d<\/p>\n There are a few things to note about the bad press that Columbus began receiving in the second half of the 20th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n First, this\u00a0crusade against Columbus\u2014and that\u2019s exactly what it is, a crusade\u2014is not inspired by any disinterested pursuit of historical accuracy. In fact, none of this is about history at all. Rather, like so much else of what passes for \u201chistory\u201d today, it is nothing more or less than \u201cretrospective politics,\u201d as the English philosopher Michael Oakeshott once labeled the enterprise of dressing up brute partisan polemics with references to \u201cthe past.\u201d<\/p>\n This brings us to our next point. A real historian should try as much as possible to resist making any moral pronouncements regarding the characters of his subjects.\u00a0 Those who seek to reduce Columbus to a caricature of evil personified reduce themselves<\/em> to the simplest of polemicists. And that Columbus\u2019s critics are practically to a man and woman of the same leftist political orientation should be more than enough to establish that they seek to promote an ideological agenda.<\/p>\n And what is this ideological agenda? At this juncture in our civilization, most people who pay any attention to these matters know well enough the answer to this question.<\/p>\n The campaign against Columbus isn\u2019t about history, it is true, but, ultimately, it isn\u2019t even about Columbus.<\/p>\n It is nothing more or less than a wholesale condemnation of Western civilization.<\/p>\n As \u201ccommunity organizer\u201d extraordinaire Saul Alinsky knew well enough, to be successful, the organizer must concretize the abstract institutional arrangements against which he rails by giving them a face. \u201cThe System\u201d is too vague. The organizer, to be effective, must single out a specific target for attack.<\/p>\n Columbus\u2019s detractors are the Western world\u2019s malcontents. In convicting this <\/em>white, Christian man, Columbus, of the worst of sins, his enemies hold him up as the quintessential poster boy for all Westerners of European stock.\u00a0 Columbus is merely a symbol of the brutal racial oppression upon which the West was founded.<\/p>\n Anyone who doubts this thesis need only consider that the same kind <\/em>of charges made against Columbus\u2014he was an \u201cexploiter,\u201d a \u201cracist,\u201d an \u201censlaver,\u201d and a \u201cgenocidal murderer\u201d\u2014have been made by leftists against any number of people traditionally regarded as Western heroes.\u00a0 Many of America\u2019s Founders are a case in point.<\/p>\n The effort to discredit Columbus is of a piece with the effort to discredit Western civilization itself. It is a part, an integral part, of a movement to demoralize Western peoples by depriving them of those of their heroes who have occupied a particularly esteemed position in their collective consciousness, those of their heroes who signify for them some of the noblest, the most essential, moments in the life of their civilization.<\/p>\n That there were indeed injustices visited by Europeans against the Indians is undeniable. It is no less true that to know only this is to know virtually nothing. For now, suffice it to say that Columbus was no saint.\u00a0 However, neither was he a villain.\u00a0 He was a man whose vision and courage contributed immeasurably to both the new and old worlds, the Americas and Europe.\u00a0 Countless numbers of peoples have been reaping endless blessings from Columbus’s efforts ever since.<\/p>\n Happy Columbus Day!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Few holidays are as \u201cpolitically incorrect\u201d as is the day that Americans reserve to commemorate the birthday of Christopher Columbus. Such is the ferocity of the smear campaign to which Columbus has been subjected for decades that he has been made into a villain among villains in the rogues\u2019 gallery of history. Geoffrey Symcox, of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n