Demonizing Columbus...for Barbarity's Sake
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Today is the day when the civilized world, or rather, the civilized people remaining within it, celebrate the discovery of the Western Hemisphere by the explorer Christopher Columbus.
Yeah, you read that right. It was Columbus, not the pre-Columbian immigrants from Asia whom we are now urged to call "indigenous," who brought to the Western Hemisphere the entire Greco-Roman philosophical corpus that ultimately made individual rights and liberty possible. It is Columbus, not the earlier Scandinavian explorers who settled on, then abandoned, what is now eastern Canada, who opened a new world to the whole of the Eastern Hemisphere - as a refuge to people of any ethnicity who sought escape from the collectivist tyrannies of feudalism and tribalism.
Predictably, the haters of Western Civilization, worshippers of primitivism and apologists for barbarity have spent the last couple decades in an attempt to demonize Columbus as an amoral juggernaut.
- Because Columbus and his crews inadvertently brought with them pathogens such as smallpox and rudely failed to bring 21st Century medical technology as well, he/they are to be considered guilty of "genocide";
- Because subsequent European explorers and "indigenous peoples" waged wars against each other, the former are to be considered guilty of having introduced injustice and strife to the latter.
The presumption here is that pre-Columbians were noble, peace-loving folk who lived in blissful harmony with one another and enjoyed an Eden-like "highly-advanced civilization."
...Like the peace-loving, errm, warriors of what is now North America, who lived in a state of perpetual warfare with one another and subsisted at a stone-age, tribal level that had not advanced in millennia;
...And like the Aztec, Toltec, Maya, Inca, Chimu and several other pre-Columbian cultures that routinely - presumably with a "have a nice day" at the ready - slaughtered both their own people and the subjugated peoples of neighboring tribes in vast ritual human sacrifices - in the case of the Aztecs several thousand per single ceremony - until literal rivers of blood drenched their "beautiful and highly-advanced" pyramids. Human sacrifice and cannibalism were also prominent in Hawaiian culture prior to the arrival of Western Civilization.
In short, what the ultimate conquest of the Western Hemisphere by the Eastern Hemisphere represented for the immigrant "indigenous peoples," was another conflict with yet another "tribe" - but with two vital differences: 1.) This new "tribe" had overwhelmingly superior technology, therefore won decisively, and 2.) this new "tribe" carried with it a body of ideas that revolutionized and, over time, vastly improved not just the lives of Europeans but the entire human race in its every ethnic derivation, including the descendents of the pre-Columbian immigrants themselves.
That body of ideas was, and is: Western Civilization.
I cannot recommend more highly the seminal essay by economist George Reisman titled Education and the Racist Road to Barbarism, first published in 1990 in The Intellectual Activist.
Pass the link on to every thinking person you know; there are links at the end of the essay to printed pamphlet versions, useful for mailing to your elected officious, harassing your leftwing professors (but I repeat myself,) and annoying - possibly enlightening - leftwing acquaintances. It should be considered required reading, not just as intellectual ammunition in the multiculturacists' attack on Columbus, but as a timeless reiteration of Western Civilization's nature and value.
Other excellent articles:
Columbus Day: In Praise of Exploitation by Edward Hudgins, 2005
On Columbus Day, Celebrate Western Civilization, Not Multiculturalism by Michael S. Berliner, 2003;
Columbus Day: The Cure for 9/11 by Thomas A. Bowden, author of The Enemies of Christopher Columbus, 2003
Also highly recommended:
Gibson's film "Apocalypto", an extremely well-done exercise in historical perspective.
Today is the day when the civilized world, or rather, the civilized people remaining within it, celebrate the discovery of the Western Hemisphere by the explorer Christopher Columbus.
Yeah, you read that right. It was Columbus, not the pre-Columbian immigrants from Asia whom we are now urged to call "indigenous," who brought to the Western Hemisphere the entire Greco-Roman philosophical corpus that ultimately made individual rights and liberty possible. It is Columbus, not the earlier Scandinavian explorers who settled on, then abandoned, what is now eastern Canada, who opened a new world to the whole of the Eastern Hemisphere - as a refuge to people of any ethnicity who sought escape from the collectivist tyrannies of feudalism and tribalism.
Predictably, the haters of Western Civilization, worshippers of primitivism and apologists for barbarity have spent the last couple decades in an attempt to demonize Columbus as an amoral juggernaut.
- Because Columbus and his crews inadvertently brought with them pathogens such as smallpox and rudely failed to bring 21st Century medical technology as well, he/they are to be considered guilty of "genocide";
- Because subsequent European explorers and "indigenous peoples" waged wars against each other, the former are to be considered guilty of having introduced injustice and strife to the latter.
The presumption here is that pre-Columbians were noble, peace-loving folk who lived in blissful harmony with one another and enjoyed an Eden-like "highly-advanced civilization."
...Like the peace-loving, errm, warriors of what is now North America, who lived in a state of perpetual warfare with one another and subsisted at a stone-age, tribal level that had not advanced in millennia;
...And like the Aztec, Toltec, Maya, Inca, Chimu and several other pre-Columbian cultures that routinely - presumably with a "have a nice day" at the ready - slaughtered both their own people and the subjugated peoples of neighboring tribes in vast ritual human sacrifices - in the case of the Aztecs several thousand per single ceremony - until literal rivers of blood drenched their "beautiful and highly-advanced" pyramids. Human sacrifice and cannibalism were also prominent in Hawaiian culture prior to the arrival of Western Civilization.
In short, what the ultimate conquest of the Western Hemisphere by the Eastern Hemisphere represented for the immigrant "indigenous peoples," was another conflict with yet another "tribe" - but with two vital differences: 1.) This new "tribe" had overwhelmingly superior technology, therefore won decisively, and 2.) this new "tribe" carried with it a body of ideas that revolutionized and, over time, vastly improved not just the lives of Europeans but the entire human race in its every ethnic derivation, including the descendents of the pre-Columbian immigrants themselves.
That body of ideas was, and is: Western Civilization.
I cannot recommend more highly the seminal essay by economist George Reisman titled Education and the Racist Road to Barbarism, first published in 1990 in The Intellectual Activist.
Pass the link on to every thinking person you know; there are links at the end of the essay to printed pamphlet versions, useful for mailing to your elected officious, harassing your leftwing professors (but I repeat myself,) and annoying - possibly enlightening - leftwing acquaintances. It should be considered required reading, not just as intellectual ammunition in the multiculturacists' attack on Columbus, but as a timeless reiteration of Western Civilization's nature and value.
Other excellent articles:
Columbus Day: In Praise of Exploitation by Edward Hudgins, 2005
On Columbus Day, Celebrate Western Civilization, Not Multiculturalism by Michael S. Berliner, 2003;
Columbus Day: The Cure for 9/11 by Thomas A. Bowden, author of The Enemies of Christopher Columbus, 2003
Also highly recommended:
Gibson's film "Apocalypto", an extremely well-done exercise in historical perspective.
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