Preparations for the anti-Columbus campaign began in 1990, when the 35,000 member American Library Association condemned the forthcoming 500th anniversary celebration. According to the ALA, events after 1492 “begin a legacy of European piracy, brutality, slave trading, murder, disease, conquest, and ethnocide. In 1991, the National Education Association weighed in against the Admiral of the Ocean Seas, urging its members at a national conference to promote the new multiculturalist party line that Columbus was a mass murderer and criminal. NEA Today predicted, “Never again will Christopher Columbus sit on a pedestal in United States history.” Lending its dubious moral weigh to the hate campaign, the National Council of Churches in 1991 issued a condemnation of Columbus’s voyages claiming, “For Indians, Christopher Columbus’s invasion marked the beginning of slavery and eventual genocide.”
In order to guarantee that the inmates of America’s public education system were force-fed the new party line, the National Council of Education activists produced a 97-page guide entitled Rethinking Columbus.
Christopher Columbus tried for years to get funds from France, Portugal and England before he hit it lucky in Spain.
King Ferdinand of Aragon and his wife and co-ruler, Queen Isabella of Castile, sponsored his venture. The king was grumpy about it but Isabella furnished three ships.
As every pupil knows (or should know) Columbus sailed west thinking he would land in Asia. A happy sailor sighted a West Indian island and on October 12, in the name of his sponsors, Columbus claimed the real estate for Spain. It turned out to be a small island, but no matter. Columbus made four trips in all, amid storms, threatened mutinies, and, on the third trip, envious palace hangers-on had him put in chains.
After his fourth voyage, on which he explored the coast of Central America, he returned to Spain. It was his ill fortune that the queen died before Ferdinand, and this left him without a friend at court. He died in 1504, in poverty and neglect. Ironically, he never knew that he had discovered a new continent, later to be called America.
Other explorers followed, settlers came, towns grew, a new form of government was devised, and trade, industry and agriculture flourished. The part of America called the United States had been not only a haven for the oppressed but an example to the world.
So one would expect Columbus to be honored every year in America, instead many democrats, teachers, clergy vilify him.
You may want to read the following book written by a liberal reporter for the NY Times:
Dictatorship of Virtue: How the Battle over Multiculturalism Is
Reshaping Our Schools, Our Country, and Our Lives
by RICHARD BERNSTEIN
Rethinking Columbus - Rethinking Schools Online In order to guarantee that the inmates of America's public education system were force-fed the new party line, the National Council of Education activists produced a 97-page guide entitled Rethinking Columbus. The chapter titles in this booklet display a Mao-like gift for ideological pedagogy: "We Have No Reason to Celebrate an Invasion"; "Why I am Not Thankful for Thanksgiving"; "Helping Children Critique Columbus Books"; "Once Upon a Genocide"From: REPMilw@aol.com
Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 22:41:10 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: new web site
You might want to mention our new web site,
http://www.rethinkingschools.org
The lead story in the current issue section is by Eric Rofes entitled, "Gay Issues, Schools and the Right Wing Backlash." It is available on the web.
A recent reviewer wrote about the website:
On May 1, the Rethinking Schools website went up. Rethinking Schools, for those of you who do not yet subscribe, is the best activist education journal I have ever read. Based in Milwaukee, it includes articles from all over the country.
Written by and for teachers, it is the leading grass-roots voice for reform of our public schools (which are our surest bulwark against anti-democratic forces in this country). Its widely-praised special edition publications (which you should definitely order for your local library and schools) include Rethinking Columbus, Rethinking Our Classrooms, and Selling Out Our Schools.
RS is a must-read for teachers, parents, and anyone concerned about educational equity and multi-cultural/anti-racist education. And its new website is a "must-browse." Check out the articles from current and past issues, the complete index, reviews of education publications, links with key education and social action URLs, a math corner, No Comment (reports of inane actions taken by bureaucrats and bombasts such as John Silber), and more. They took a lot of time and care in developing it, and I think the quality shows.
Please check it out and mention it to your internet friends: http://www.rethinkingschools.org
Probably the hundreds of thousands of students.
He didn't know where he was going.
He didn't know where he'd arrived at.
And he did it on a government grant.
In other words...he was the first liberal (c8
Too bad. I've got this block of cheese, see...
Western culture has been the most successful in the history of the world. By this very reason, it should be studied before any other culture. No, it's not perfect, but neither is any other culture, except in the clouded minds of utopian philosophers.
Wonderful post. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
It would be a strange thing if six nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such a union, and be able to executive it in such a manner as that it has subsisted for ages and appears indissoluble, and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies, to whom it is more necessary and must be more advantageous, and who cannot be supposed to want an equal understanding of their interests.
To be consistent, multiculturalists must also condemn Cro-Magnon man from invading and settling those areas occupied by the Neanderthals.
***So why did European attitudes toward the Indian, initially so favorable, subsequently change? ***
One word. BRUTALITY.
Consider this term. Sel-vedge. It means "dwellers of the green forest." This is what all natives everywhere were called at that time.
The term was corrupted to "salvage" and then "savage" and today is a euphamism for intense brutality. "Savage fighting. Intense Savagry. Uncivilized form of warfare," ect.
The Spanish were the first to find Indians scalping Indians. Later it was reported by the French and English explorers years before they were supposed to have taught the Indians to do so.
I like the discription of scalping as seen by Captain John Smith..."They cased off the hair with knives made of shell and reeds and hung them on a rope streached between two poles"
The beautiful engravings of Theodore de Bry shows several scalps, arms and legs also hung in such a manner.
BTTT
bflr
bump
read later
BUMP
Ya know, I have no problem with people celebrating the achievements of Columbus - it's their right to do so. However, I also believe that people have the right to point out his flaws - and they were many - if they so choose.
The bottom line is, I am interested in truth, not a whitewash of history one way or another.
It's an interesting and difficult position, being who and what I am, when the Columbus issue comes up. I can understand the feelings that Columbus invokes in my fellow American Indians, as he really did change things for us and not really in a good way. He was a cruel greedy man that caused a lot of destruction... By the same token, however, I also find that if it wasn't for him and his voyages, there probably never would have been a United States of America - the greatest nation on Earth - and the world would be a far worse place without the U.S.
It's a difficult question. However, I stand by what I said - the truth, no matter how brutal it is, is better than lies, embellishments, and leaving things out...
By the way, on a completely unrelated note (or is it?) - regarding The Bush Doctrine? The Iroquois used to have that doctrine, too - "You are either allied with us, or you are against us" - no middle ground, no neutrality. Period. It's a great policy, and am glad to see President Bush going back to historical ideas in the modern world ;0)
ping
Christopher Columbus has always been the lightning rod for all of these multiculturalists. They just don't want to admit that European traditions and institutions made western civilization great. I doubt that these overeducated and mostly rich multicultural supporters would enjoy living under primitive "native" conditions today. These people need to get lives.
The last of the Moorish rulers was expelled from the Iberian peninsula in the reconquista of 1492 when Ferdinand and Isabella, Los Reyes Catolicos (The Catholic Monarchs), expelled the last of the Moorish rulers, Boabdil of Granada, from the peninsula, uniting most of what is now Spain.