Columbus deserves to be celebrated for his courage, sense of adventure, and his actual achievements which above all was making a very hazardous voyage and trailblazing a route to a new world.
To criticize him for being part of the culture of his days is moronic. The same can be said for those who criticize Jefferson and other founders for owning slaves.
3 hazardous voyages. And that does not diminish the courage of earlier explorers.
“To criticize him for being part of the culture of his days is moronic.”
Very true. This is something everyone should know. To understand a historical figure, you have to immerse yourself in that period and see things as they appeared in that time and place.
I wonder if the most vigorous enforcers of political correctness today would have been the most vigorous enforcers of political correctness in the past. Think of it as a personality trait. Perhaps a susceptibility to indoctrination, combined with an authoritarian personality. A bully of sorts.
So, for example, the people of today who see racism in everything, might have been members of the KKK if they had been around in the 1920s.