-By Warner Todd Huston
Today is Columbus Day and once again liberals are out to erase part of American history and western culture.
Columbus is, of course, the Italian mariner who claimed the Americas for Spain in the late 1400s. He proved that the Old World actually could reach across the vast oceans — once thought un-navigable — and link this planet among humanity.
Naturally the left is lashing out in destruction and violence, as they always do. They are destroying monuments to Columbus and his feat all across the country and forcing liberal-infested cities to cancel traditional Columbus Day celebrations.
Liberals everywhere are seeking to destroy Columbus and replace his “day” with something as absurd as “Indigenous Peoples Day.”
Of course, it is ignorant to celebrate “Indigenous Peoples Day” because the whole idea of such a “day” presupposes that the “indigenous peoples” were universally peaceful and proud people who the invading Europeans “ruined.”
This premise, though, is entirely false.
The vaunted “indigenous people” in the America’s were no more virtuous than any other humans anywhere else on the planet — then OR now.
The truth is, the vaunted “indigenous peoples” destroyed their environments, stole from each other, killed each other with impunity, were entirely racist, practiced slavery and rape against enemies, and launched wars against each other all the time.
Many liberals imagine that Columbus’ main goal was to rape the New World for its riches. While making money from the gold he expected to find in the Americas certainly was a motivation, the chief goal of the first Columbus mission was religious. Indeed, most of the budget the Spanish gave Columbus for his mission was aimed at spreading Christianity, not finding gold and riches.
Columbus also warned his crew that marauding and rapine was not allowed when they reached the New World. In fact, the sort of savagery of later expeditions cannot be properly pinned on Columbus because he never perpetrated such things in either of his missions to the Americas.
Interestingly, as today’s left-wingers are pushing the anti-Columbus narrative, there was another notorious group that once did the same thing. The Ku Klux Klan was a big hater of Columbus because he is an Italian and the Klan did not like the “brown” Italians entering the U.S. in the late 1800s and early 1900s. So, as it turns out, today’s leftists have common cause with the KKK.
As Jarrett Stepman reminded us all, President Reagan said it best:
Columbus is justly admired as a brilliant navigator, a fearless man of action, a visionary who opened the eyes of an older world to an entirely new one. Above all, he personifies a view of the world that many see as quintessentially American: not merely optimistic, but scornful of the very notion of despair.
So, Happy Columbus Day, America.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.