"He had three ships and left from Spain/ He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain."
-- Source Unknown
Posted on 10/08/2012 4:11:00 PM PDT by Starman417
"He had three ships and left from Spain/ He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain."
-- Source Unknown
I'm old enough to remember a time when Christopher Columbus Day was a national holiday that was widely celebrated rather than shamefully downplayed and derided. Columbus has become the symbolic white devil harbinger of all that is evil about America's founding: genocide and manifest destiny imperialism; slavery and racism; annihilation and exploitation of peaceful, "noble savages" living in harmony with the environment.
President Obama seems to echo the sentiments of multiculturalist leftists and Howard Zinn liberals in perceiving this holiday as an occasion more in tune for mourning rather than celebrating:
President Obama marked Columbus Day by issuing a proclamation that reflects “on the tragic burdens tribal communities bore” in the years that followed the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus.“When the explorers laid anchor in the Bahamas, they met indigenous peoples who had inhabited the Western hemisphere for millennia,” Obama wrote. “As we reflect on the tragic burdens tribal communities bore in the years that followed, let us commemorate the many contributions they have made to the American experience, and let us continue to strengthen the ties that bind us today.”
On this anniversary, Charles C. W. Cooke criticizes the imposition of "modern morality on the past" as "a form of historical illiteracy".
The explosion of certain parts of the Columbus myth, along with some more recent discoveries about his less noble proclivities, has led many to disown the man and a few more to protest against the national holiday in his honor. Berkeley, Brown, and — ironically — Columbia universities have abolished recognition of Columbus Day entirely, while others have substituted nebulous celebrations of “diversity” on that day. Journey into any trendy progressive enclave and you will find that Christopher Columbus is persona non grata.This, like most political correctness, is a grievous mistake. As the historian William J. Connell argues, Columbus may not have been the first of the voyagers to discover America, but he was undoubtedly the most important. “His arrival,” Connell argues, “marks where we as a country and a hemisphere began our identity.” Unlike previous landings, Columbus’s mattered. It was the first to lead to a permanent settlement and the first enduring landing from a civilization that boasted modern ideas such as a belief in science, reason, individual achievement, and Christianity. Ultimately, Columbus’s story serves as the introduction to a story of immeasurable historical importance. To dismiss celebration of the man because he didn’t make it to America first would be akin to declaring that we must scorn Isaac Newton’s contribution to science because he wasn’t actually hit by an apple.
Of the charge that he brought smallpox to the New World and is thus guilty of wiping out untold numbers of the native people, Columbus must be exonerated. The vast majority of the devastation inflicted upon the Indian tribes was inadvertent: As he did not propose that the world was round, he also did not propose germ theory — that would not be proffered until after the invention of the telephone — and it is simply preposterous to postulate that he should have known what would happen when two hitherto unfamiliar worlds collided. If one is to lay the blame at Columbus’s feet for the collapse of the Indian population, one also must blame the Indians for unwittingly giving the visitors syphilis, which they took back with them and which subsequently wiped out upwards of 5 million Europeans. It was an unfortunate quid pro quo, to be sure, but not one for which either side should feel much guilt.
(excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
Pizzaro- well there’s a flash back to 4th grade! As horrible as public schools are now, from the stuff I read here, I got an excellent education in history. I guess maybe because so many teachers were hold overs from when prayers were still said, the Pledge of Allegiance was said every morning, and living in a conservative town. Music class taught us all the patriotic songs till we knew them by heart. I seem to have gotten in under the bell because my sister, 6 years younger, is a clueless, flaming lib.
Yup, Columbus interrupted inter-tribal warfare, sun worship and cannibalism, to find a little gold.
That should be Pizarro.
If I can find them, in a moving box somewhere, I’ll private FR you and get your address and send them to you.
zero is SUCH a racist pig.
“That should be Pizarro.”
Copy and paste mistake. And hey, I’m over 50 and may be slightly senile ;) Communication- if you get your point across, it works. May offend us purists, but....
Read em.
Not Pizarro, he was in Peru. De Soto.
What people don’t generally realize is that each of these plague diseases had a similar disastrous effect when they first emerged in Eurasia. Those still around a century or two later were of course by definition descended from the survivors, so had some natural immunity.
A few centuries later another plague would roll through. Everybody thinks of the Black Plague, but there were also great epidemics in the time of Justinian and of Pericles, and many others.
So the Europeans of the 16th century were descended from people who had for thousands of years been killed off intermittently by epidemics and gradually developed immunity to them.
But these same diseases Eurasians had been exposed to over millenia all moved into America in less than a century, hitting the natives almost simultaneously. No time to develop social immunity.
Nobody is claiming 100M Indians in what is now USA. They're claiming 100M, which may be somewhat high, in all of North, Central and South America.
It is likely both Meso-American and the Inca Empire had at least 25M each, perhaps quite a few more. It is generally accepted, for instance, that the central valley of Mexico didn't get back to its pre-Cortez population till the 1950s.
In addition, it appears there were populous societies living in what is now the Amazon jungle.
Arnett's account and opinions about that period in the history of America differ greatly from the revisionist history of our "progressive" politicians who must twist history in order to make conform it to their political agenda. Rev. Arnett:
"In every respect we live in the great harvest period of the world, the golden autumn of its growth. Other nations have toyed with knowledge in its swaddling bands, but we have fellowship with it in its mighty manhood. Men, not very long ago, knew science as a sickly plant, springing with difficulty from the hard ground of ignorance and superstition. Now, it is a magnificent tree, and we sit beneath its shades and eats its maturest fruit.”
"The Fundamental Idea.But I am proud to say of them that they built wiser than they knew; their foundation was on solid ground, but the superstructure was a little contracted, but time has enabled their children to make some changes in it, adding to the beauty, symmetry and durability of the Temple of American Liberty. The government was founded on the principle that “Righteousness exalteth a Nation, and that sin is a reproach to any people.” This position I take with the understanding that I am to question the records of the past, to see whether it is only an assertion, or a fact in the living history of this nation; was it so recognized by those who formed it, or was it an after thought of the children? But I think the language of Dr. Mayo, in his address on the banishment of the Bible from our Common Schools, was the sentiment of the Fathers of our Country, and whether it was theirs or not, it is certainly the average sentiment of the present generation:"'If there is one thing that is universal, one sentiment that makes men human, one-influence that is cosmopolitan, one golden chain which clasps by Adam's hand and felt after by the trembling fingers of the last new born child, binds all created men in one family, unites nations, and races and ages in a sublime brotherhood, and pressing upward is but in the mysterious universe peopled by myriads of created intelligence and pervaded by the spirit of infinite love, that golden chain is Religion. No nation ever existed that was not founded upon it; no human institutions that have repudiated the worship of God and the religious and moral duties of man, have been able to stand upright in this world. All the occupations of human life are organized around the universal religious faith of man. The family, the school, the whole machinery of human government, no less than the church, are built upon this universal faith. Whether expressed or understood, religion is present, visible like the light, or invisible like the air, the element which binds all together and makes life itself a blessing.'
There has always been in the world a class of people, who have denied in their philosophy, the possibility of religion, though compelled to recognize it in their actions. “A gracious Providence for a brief hour committed the destinies of one nation to their charge, and they ruled it long enough to make that one chapter in the history of France the bloodiest record on the book of time. That sect exists to-day in the United States, organized and sustained by men, who have thought themselves out of the world of divine realities into a universe of philosophical negations.”
"The Continent Religious by the Right of Discovery.
"W.M. Ramsey, Esq., says in an address before the citizens of Cincinnati, Sept. 28th, 1869, that 'Columbus when he beheld the shores of the New World, called all hands about him, and offered solemn thanks and supplications, to Almighty God; and when he went on the land, he kneeling before High Heaven, dedicated it a second time to the Ruler of the Universe.'"The world was hunting for a passage to the East Indies, but God was sending them out to hunt a field in which the great problem of human government and universal soul and mind freedom could fright and conquer the enemies of man and foes to God. In this, as in many other cases, in the multifarious works of man, we find that there is a divinity that shapes our ends, let us rough hew them as we may. This was only a prelude to a grand succession of events, which have made this continent illustrious in the annals of history, and furnished a number of brilliant names for the galaxy of the temple of fame. But what was the moving force in the breast of the distinguished pioneers. By the way, Justin D. Fulton in his "Outlook of Freedom' page 30, says: 'It was on the third of August, 1492, a little before sunrise, that Christopher Columbus, undertaking the most memorable enterprise that human genius ever planned, set sail from Spain for the discovery of the Western World. On the 13th of October, about two hours before midnight, a light on the Island of San Salvador was discovered by Columbus, from the deck of his vessel, and America was, for the first time, beheld by European eyes. The admiral, on the following morning attended by his followers stepped upon the shore, and with tears of joy streaming down his cheeks, threw himself upon his knees, kissing the earth, and returned thanks to God. Arising, he drew his sword, planted the cross, displayed the royal standard, and as the banners of the enterprise were flung to the breeze, he took possession of the soil, and a connection that was to subsist forever, was established between Europe and America.' And he might have added, a connection between the purpose for which God intended was recognized here; first the banner of the cross, then that of Spain; God first and man next; God and Christ, then Ferdinand and Isabella.
"What kind of a Religion was meant by the Father, if any? I quote from another: 'Do you doubt that these men intended to found a Christian nation? Every syllable of colonial history attests it. They sought for themselves and their posterity civil and religious liberty; they knew that they were the necessary attendants of each other—that one could not exist without the other—but it was religious liberty that was uppermost in their minds; it was religious liberty of which they had been deprived in the land of their nativity; it was religious liberty of which they experienced the greater need.'
svcw, that is so kind. But surely you want to keep them?
You can always send them back after you read them.
You can count on it.
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks Starman417. |
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Christopher Columbus was Sicilian.
ROTFL!
Marking for later reference
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