Few holidays are as “politically incorrect” 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’ gallery of history. The campaign against Columbus isn’t about history, it is true, but, ultimately, it isn’t even about Columbus. It is nothing more or less than a wholesale condemnation against Western civilization. Columbus’s detractors are the Western world’s malcontents. In convicting Columbus of the worst of sins, his enemies hold him up as the quintessential poster boy for all Westerners of European stock. Columbus is merely a symbol of the “brutal racial oppression” upon which the West was founded. Anyone who doubts this thesis need only consider that the same kind of charges made against Columbus—he was an “exploiter,” a “racist,” an “enslaver,” and a “genocidal murderer”—have been made by leftists against any number of people traditionally regarded as Western heroes. Many of America’s Founders are a case in point. 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. 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. However, neither was he a villain. He was a man whose vision and courage contributed immeasurably to the world, “the New World,” from which countless numbers of peoples have been reaping endless blessings for centuries. frontpagemag/2013/jack-kerwick/columbus-day-still-a-day-worth-celebrating/
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 17:31:22 +0000
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