Five hundred and seventeen years ago, Rodrigo de Triana shouted: "Tierra! Tierra!" The sailor aboard the Pinta spotted land--the New World--after more than two uneasy months at sea. "I," Christopher Columbus noted of his first encounter with the natives, "in order that they might feel great amity toward us, because I knew that they were a people to be delivered to our holy faith by faith rather than force, gave to some among them some red caps and some glass beads, which they hung round their necks, and many other things of little value." Columbus reported that the "Indians" were "pleased" and "became our friends." Columbus found the encountered pleasing too, describing them as "very gentle." The relationship between Europeans and Native Americans went downhill from there.

The Indians gave the Europeans syphillis. The Europeans gave the Indians smallpox. Despite the best efforts of countermythologists to make it so, Europeans did not introduce the Indians to slavery or war. Columbus found evidence of both within a few days of arrival and noted it in his journal. He found no sign of iron, the wheel, or a written language. Europeans would export such handy staples of post-Stone Age societies to the New World. But Europe's military superiority, alongside the white man's lust for gold, religious converts, and land--as well as the geographic isolation of the Native Americans that impeded their immune systems to combat fatal diseases--decimated the primitive people in the decades that followed.

One's view of the Americas, or more specifically the nation that bears that name, generally determines one's view of Columbus. "Happy Columbus Day," like "Merry Christmas," is increasingly heard as an insult. Enemies of the Italian sea captain celebrate Indigenous People's Day, protest Columbus Day observances, and compare Columbus to Hitler. Columbus kidnapped, enslaved, and exploited, his detractors exclaim. Indeed, he did. He also discovered the continent Americans live upon. Truth commands that we remember his misdeeds. Proportion suggests that we remember him first for his magnificent find. (FlynnFiles Flashback, 10-10-05)

"Columbus kidnapped, enslaved, and exploited, his detractors exclaim"

True true. But your following sentence is prevalent and omelets aren't made without breaking eggs. The successes of most cultures have mostly been at the expense of lesser cultures.

That sounds smug and dismissive but what culture in history has not kidnapped, enslaved and exploited using those means to reach their end? It happened then and it happens now. So before modern folk start getting noble, they should consider that we are here because our forefathers were there.

Along these lines, movies like Pathfinder, Dances With Wolves and the like depict the Native Americans as peaceful and benign while showing the European or descendent as crude and murderous.

Again, the liberals and liberals in Hollywood would have revisionist history be the truth but all cultures in their time were brutal and destructive.

So I say: Happy Columbus Day.

Thank you for at least being honest, asdf. This is the internet, after all, no reason to lie. It's worth noting that that particular calculus can be used to justify any act and is the essence of evil. It's rooted in the philosophies of Ayn Rand, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Adolf Hitler.

There's modern conservatism for you!

A closer to truth Hollywood (better yet, Melwood) production is Apocalypto.

Blood thirsty native people's circa early 17th century - murdering, enslaving and performing human sacrifice on each other way before the white European arrived.

The same was true for our American native peoples.

Yes asdf, we know the extent of your knowledge of Native American culture is limited by the confines of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto.

Of course, the protagonist of that film was not depicted as a bloodthirsty slave master, but you were stretching for something, right?

You're probably right about that. But so is true for a majority of other people who are non-scholars and who chose to blame the white European for all that has been disruptive to most native cultures now and historically.

"It's rooted in the philosophies of Ayn Rand, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Adolf Hitler."

Liberal education has failed us.

You can say that again. And again.

You can say that again. And again.

from takimag:

http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/sailing_away/

Sailing Away by Mike Payne on October 12, 2009
Simple political cost-benefit outlook makes it a strong bet that Columbus Day will get a makeover in the next ten years. In the coming decade, as the government starts betraying its financial promises, empty gestures of sensitivity will be all the rage as politicians scurry to appear useful. In light of this, a safe target like Columbus Day will be just too tempting.
How will the Columbus Day airbrushing be handled? My money is on these two approaches:
1) Dilute Columbus’s status by incorporating other figures into the occasion, i.e., change Columbus Day to something like Lee-Jackson-King Day. Who might be picked to hyphenate Columbus? Cesar Chavez comes to mind, since his inclusion would play well in the Southwest and afford politicians a chance to publicly practice their overpronunciation skills.
Another candidate is Sitting Bull. Namedropping him makes it easier to assuage pro-Columbus holdouts by saying, “We’re not really changing anything. America’s roots are what Columbus Day was all about.” Bringing Sitting Bull off the icon bench is also a clever way of demoting Columbus without having to make any messy new fiscal concessions. IHS hospitals are already government-run fiascos, so there would be no need to nationalize them “in Sitting Bull’s name.”
2) Convert it to a generic, themed holiday built around the anodyne theme of discovery, complete with a daring and creative name like…Discovery Day. This sidesteps the awkwardness of pinning specific names to the occasion, while giving officials a platform to highlight more politically correct adventurers like Amelia Earhart.
Given that option one would trigger the same problems as Lee-Jackson-King Day, I see the Discovery Day approach as more likely.
If Columbus and his journey remain in the picture at all, the narrative will be retrofitted to reflect some newfound thread of inclusiveness. Sure, school kids will still draw pictures of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, only now they’ll have to color one ship white, one brown, and one yellow to celebrate all the colors of the human rainbow. We might even learn that Columbus wanted to sail to Asia so he could experience more diversity.
In either scenario, Christopher Columbus will exit the public stage as a red-headed stepchild. Poetic, since Columbus possibly belonged to the most blighted tribe of all; the Ginger.

"It's rooted in the philosophies of Ayn Rand, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Adolf Hitler."

Liberal education has failed us.
Posted by Ralph at October 12, 2009 12:41 PM

Hey Ralph, your opinion is great, but in the future maybe you could back it up with some argumentation or facts?

Rand saw her views as constituting an integrated philosophical system, which she called "Objectivism." The essence of Objectivism, according to Rand, is "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity
source: Wikipedia

Nietzsche presents master-morality as the original system of morality — perhaps best associated with Homeric Greece. Here, value arises as a contrast between good and bad, or between 'life-affirming' and 'life-denying': wealth, strength, health, and power (the sort of traits found in a Homeric hero) count as good; while bad is associated with the poor, weak, sick, and pathetic (the sort of traits conventionally associated with slaves in ancient times).
source:Wikipedia

Hitler wasn't philosophically sophisticated, but he did mention Schopenhauer in Mein Kampf, and although Hitler certainly didn't care about fellow sufferers he probably agreed with a Nietzschean interpretation of Schopenhauer's metaphysical system, and certainly acted according to a "survival of the fittest" principle.