Posted on 10/09/2017 11:47:54 AM PDT by Kaslin
In Los Angeles County, the holiday of Columbus Day will soon vanish. The Board of Supervisors has replaced it with "Indigenous People's Day."
The reason: Christopher Columbus was "oppressive."
Kind of like the traffic in LA.
The hate-Columbus movement is led by a woman named >Sheila Kuehl, who once upon a time played Zelda Gilroy in the classic 1960s sitcom Dobie Gillis. It is hard to imagine Zelda, Dobie and their pal Maynard G. Krebs protesting the great explorer back then but, hey, who knows?
One thing is for sure, the wave of political correctness that has taken root in America is way beyond "oppressive," but that's another column for another time.
Right now we have to deal with places like Los Angeles County, New York City, Denver and Albuquerque, N.M., disrespecting old Chris and, by extension, many Italian-Americans who celebrate Columbus Day as an ethnic holiday because the explorer was born in Genoa in 1451.
For those who admire Christopher Columbus there is a feeling that the PC nitwits know little about him, and that is most likely the case.
First of all, "Indigenous People's Day" might sound good on the campus of U.C. Berkeley, but it may be troublesome. Yes, some native tribes were enlightened societies but many were not. After inter-indigenous battles, torture and enslavement were often on the menu for the losers.
Sorry, Zelda.
And then there is Columbus himself. I am almost certain that the L.A. Board of Supervisors do not know that Chris never set foot on what is now mainland USA. Nope, the closest Columbus got was Cuba
For the record, Columbus made four voyages across the Atlantic between 1492 and 1504. He was looking for a route to Asia so he could buy spices at a discount or something.
But Chris kept running into various Caribbean islands, also the formidable obstacles of South and Central America. There was no passage to the Far East, only an endless drifting around.
Along the way, Columbus ran into some Indian tribes, most notably the Caribes. They did not like Chris and his malodorous European crews. Strife broke out and some bad stuff went down on both sides.
On the island of Hispaniola, present day Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Columbus did establish slavery to support various laborious enterprises. Not good. Slave labor was common at the time the world over, but that's no excuse.
However, that was a minor part of the "Columbus business," as Hollywood would have put it if they were wooing him for a three-picture deal. Mostly, Columbus was a brilliant navigator who opened up the world for travel. No small achievement.
We now live in a time where severely misguided people with little frame of reference are dictating how history should be told and what Americans have a right to see and hear. And if you disagree with them, then you, yourself, are "oppressive." And they'll cover up your statue.
Christopher Columbus was not a villain and does not deserve the vilification the PC police are heaping upon him. Every person on the planet has done bad things, but it is the totality of a human being that should be the litmus test.
Soon, the loons will come for the slaveholders George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. In fact, the Dallas school board is now debating their diminishment right now.
The legacy of America is in big trouble.
Happy Columbus Day.
O’Reilly was a history teacher before his careers in journalism, TV and co-authoring.
“Yes, some native tribes were enlightened societies but many were not.”
Where were these libertarian utopias and why have I not heard of them?
No matter his pedigree it’s just cool and the “in” thing to bash people. I dunno maybe for some it’s to make them feel good about themselves
Including, among indigenous peoples.
So was human sacrifice. Again, no excuse for people who were nominally Christian, but again, it was a brutal world they lived in. They had just finished a 700 year war against the muslims and were pretty rough around the edges themselves.
Over time she devolved into vapid radical lesbian.
All because Dobie wouldn’t date her.
There’s a lesson there somewhere.
Humans migrate for many reasons. The “indigenous” people in America migrated. When two groups of people run into each other, many times the inferior culture disappears or is absorbed into the superior one.
The Europeans were superior in technology, science, weaponry, social organization, organized religion, laws, governments, building, medicine, transportation and so on. The people who were here were overrun, as the europeans population increased and needed more space and resources. Wars were fought and land settled and the people with seniority lost out. Those are the facts of life.
This anti-columbus movement is anchored by leftists and Mexicans in the US who forget they have Spanish blood in them.
Columbus was brave and a great explorer. As a person of European descent, I am thankful he came here. I know his voyages lead to the greatest nation in the history of the word. That’s why I celebrate Columbus day. If you want a day get your own.
He was, I presume, also still a self-obsessed jerk.
thanks, but I won’t be reading anything from that pompous blowhard as long as there is anything else on earth left to read.
The liberal progressive narrative is that the indigenous peoples of America were fun loving peaceful people. Far from it they were warring against each other and committing atrocities in their own right
Seems to me I read somewhere 0’Pinhead has a degree in history...no wonder he doesn’t know $h!t ‘bout history!
ALL Indoctrination/No history!
Real Education is self-education, NOT edu.
****************
Political correctness? No, no. Political destruction!
True, for both sides. I sometimes ask people to think about the cliff dwellings:
People did NOT live in these because of the high price of land, nor for the views. They scrambled up cliffs and built dwellings because they were SCARED - and the folks they were afraid of were NOT Europeans!
Even then, the Zelda character as an a**!
And many "indigenous peoples" took SLAVES.
A few tribes in North America were peaceable. Iirc from my grade-school history, the Mandans of the Dakota region were one of the less war-like groups.
But for the most part, yes, the "indigenous peoples" of North America committed terrible atrocities against each other. And they did so long before Columbus set foot in the Western Hemisphere.
After Europeans began to settle here as farmers, many "indigenous peoples" also committed horrible atrocities against them. Eventually this became a two-way street.
“The legacy of America is in big trouble”.
They want to erase as much of America as they can so that in the future there will be nothing to compare their hell hole with. People will not know what they lost.
Its so islamic to weaken and remove the history of the victim. It aids the destruction and helps insure the victory.
Every American institution is under assault today.
Actually, we can look across the ocean and see the same march going on.
THEY fully anticipated a Hillary win as evidenced in the dovetailing of other events.
Yes, some native tribes were enlightened societies but many were not. After inter-indigenous battles, torture and enslavement were often on the menu for the losers.
...
Everybody is an immigrant in the Americas. The only indigenous humans are in Africa.
BOR had a platform to discuss the societal problems we face - what happened to his TV show?
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