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Posted on 10/11/2021 4:13:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
Among the federal holidays, Columbus Day has become one of the least honored, partially due to controversy about misdeeds associated with colonization. In fact, Columbus never set foot on or came close to any territory that later became part of the continental United States.
The history of Christopher Columbus is actually less messy and more consequential than many of the other heroes of our national holidays. There is not only a great deal to celebrate in Columbus, but the man embodied a range of attributes that are necessary to solving many of our contemporary problems and even saving our country from further decline and collapse resulting from group think, corruption and abuse of power.
The American story began with the seafaring discovery momentum created by Columbus’s feat of sailing from Europe some 4,000 miles south and west across the Atlantic Ocean in the late 15th century. His quest was twofold: to find a western passage to the Spice Islands and India, and second, to carry the good news of Jesus the savior to people in new parts of the world.
Columbus had grown up in a working-class family and his life was one of hardship, punctuated by near death and failures that would have been the demise of most ordinary people. If he had not been a man of character and determination with deep faith in God, self-confidence to ignore critics, and go against the crowd and remain steadfast in his vision and his calling, he never could have accomplished what he did, which was of course the discovery of the New World of the Western Hemisphere.
Columbus left voluminous writings that bear witness to what motivated him to do what he did. Born and raised in Genoa, Italy, he was the consummate self-made man who shipped out at an early age. Experiencing the militant face of Islam at the eastern end of the Mediterranean that created a blockade to Europe’s important overland trade with the Orient, he knew that finding a western sea route would have far-reaching benefits.
Columbus faced death when the Flemish-flagged ship on which he was crew was attacked and sunk off the coast of Portugal. But for a seafarer with his ambition and vision, as fate would have it, there was no better place to wash up than on the shore of Portugal, a nation that had developed the world’s most advanced tools of navigation and map-making. In Portugal, Columbus’s exposure to celestial navigation further confirmed his confidence to sail west across the Atlantic and find a trade route to India and the Spice Islands. By his late 30s he felt “called,” writing in his diary, “It was the Lord who put into my mind, [and] I could feel his hand upon me…that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies.”
Recognizing that such an undertaking would need state sponsorship, Columbus and his brother spent the next six years traipsing across Europe seeking support from sovereignties of the leading maritime countries, only to find rejection and ridicule. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain had turned down Columbus several times. But because of his seafaring skills, conviction in his vision of a westward passage, and his bravery and willingness to lead an armed flotilla to rescue the Holy Sepulcher from Muslim hands in the eastern Mediterranean, they had a change of heart toward Columbus.
Few years in history have been punctuated by such pivotal events as what happened in 1492. It was in that year that Christendom—still suffering from the loss of Constantinople to the Muslim Turks 40 years prior—drove Islam out of Spain and Europe with Isabella and Ferdinand playing the pivotal role. They then decided to support Christian expansion and back the exploration and evangelistic expedition of Columbus.
In his first voyage of three ships—the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria—after being at sea for nearly two months Columbus faced an anxious crew, who believed landfall should have been made by week four or five. The situation became mutinous with threats to heave Columbus overboard if he did not agree to their demands to turn back. Recognizing that he could hardly restrain let alone punish his mutinous crew given that there were 40 of them against only one of him, Columbus turned to God. In a letter that has been preserved among his personal historical records, Columbus wrote that God inspired him to make a deal with his Spanish crew and stake his life on it. He asked for three more days, and if land was not sighted, the crew could do with him as they wished.
As fate would have it, in the early morning hours of the third day on October 12, under the light of the moon and the stars, the lookout from the ship Pinta, gave the long-awaited signal of sighting land. Assuming it was an island to the east of India or perhaps China, Columbus had no idea that he was about to discover a new part of the world—the outskirts of a massive continent—far from the Orient.
Today’s “woke” culture, which has held Columbus accountable for the chain of disasters that followed in his wake in the Caribbean and South America is not only unfair to him, but it overlooks the essence of the man. Not of Spanish culture, Columbus was at heart a simple but ambitious individualist—a seafaring explorer and evangelist. He had neither interest in founding colonies nor was he an effective leader and administrator of strong-headed hidalgos that undertook setting up colonial outposts at the behest of Isabella.
Columbus’s perseverance and courage in his transatlantic feat in crossing a vast ocean inspired successors from northern Europe who had been transformed by the Protestant Reformation with the ideas of equality and freedom. They would set out to pursue a new life in a new world, ultimately establishing 13 different colonies in coastal North America.
Suffering injustice from Great Britain, those colonists reluctantly banded together to fight for independence. Over the six years of the Revolutionary War they lost more battles than they won. But like the course of Columbus, George Washington’s persistence, courage and faith in God empowered an underequipped and underfunded colonial army to get to final victory and achieve independence. That in turn enabled the founding of a new nation, unlike any other—one based on the revolutionary idea that people’s life, liberty and pursuit of happiness were inviolable because those rights came from God and not man or the state.
Seen from the big picture, Columbus Day is worth keeping and honoring for the simple reason that it celebrates beliefs and qualities of character that are foundational to America. It could even be said that Columbus Day is the holiday that commemorates the human character, attitudes and choice of action that made the other American holidays possible.
Interesting point in history that is forgotten is that the Arawaks were the main food source for the Caribe Indians, form which the word “Caribbean” came.
The Spanish pronounced their name as Canabs and coined the word “cannibal”.
My short list of links to show how lovey dovey the Indians were toward each other before the white Man arrived.
https://frontierpartisans.com/3942/crow-creek-massacre/
https://www.academia.edu/7907221/Mass_Grave_at_Crow_Creek_in_South_Dakota_Reveals_How_Indians_Massacred_Indians_in_14th_Century_Attack
http://www.dickshovel.com/scalp.html
http://westerndigs.org/skeletons-in-utah-cave-are-victims-of-prehistoric-war-study-says/
https://mcclungmuseum.utk.edu/1991/12/01/scalping-victim/
http://westerndigs.org/infamous-mass-grave-of-young-women-in-ancient-city-of-cahokia-also-holds-men-study/
http://westerndigs.org/mass-grave-of-prodigal-sons-in-california-poses-prehistoric-mystery/
https://www.archaeology.org/news/2269-140630-colorado-torture-evidence
https://anthropology.net/2007/07/16/parallel-life-and-death-1275-ad-massacred-gallina-and-vanishing-anasazi/
https://ancientstandard.com/2007/07/17/csi-new-mexico-%e2%80%93-possible-genocide-ca-1275-ad/
https://archive.archaeology.org/9709/newsbriefs/anasazi.html
https://anthropology.net/2007/07/16/parallel-life-and-death-1275-ad-massacred-gallina-and-vanishing-anasazi/
https://www.ohio.edu/orgs/glass/vol/1/14.htm
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Contrary to the commonly held view that people in Columbus’s time that the earth was flat, it was accepted by experts that it was indeed a sphere.
Regiomontanus’s work was used to teach both Copenernicus’ teacher, and Copernicus himself since Regiomontanus had arrived at the concept that the Sun was the center of our solar system, not the earth, and all of his work and accomplishments regarding the appearance and locations of heavenly bodies such as comets and planets followed from that concept of the planets rotating around the sun, not the earth.
What I don’t know is if Columbus derived the eclipse from the data provided by Regiomontanus (since he had Regiomontanus’book with him, apparently it was similar to the modern US Navy (probably at least up to the 1970’s) where you wouldn’t go to sea unless you had a copy of Bowdich (The American Practical Navigator) with you.) or if it were in the book itself.
Columbus was a very smart guy. He doesn’t get any credit from many of his detractors for that. They think he simply stood on the shoulders of others...which he did. But he enabled his own path.
One of the best and most enjoyable books on the subject is “Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus” by Samuel Eliot Morison. Great and enjoyable book, along with his “The European Discovery of America” volumes 1 and 2, and “The Great Explorers”.
Besides being incredibly informative, he writes in an engaging manner, and has sailed the waters of North America and the Caribbean extensively and often compares what he saw to what those early explorers saw.
Very cool stuff!
In the post above I mentioned some books by Samuel Eliot Morison who I greatly admire, and in his book “The Great Explorers”, he talks about Giovanni da Verrazzano (the Italian explorer after whom the Verrazzano bridge in NY was named) who went ashore alone in Guadeloupe, was seized by Caribs, killed, cut up, and eaten in full view of his crew on the ship who could only watch in utter helplessness.
It is no wonder Columbus was greeted with open arms by the indigenous people in the Caribbean-they were preyed on by the Caribs, whose fierce and bloodthirsty reputation cannot even be conceived of by people today. The natives being preyed on likely viewed Columbus and his great big ships as a bulwark.
I think there is even an account of the captain of one of Columbus’ ships taking a beautiful Caribe woman as a captive to be used for sex (hard to feel sympathy for her, since her people took people to eat them and not to have sex with them) and she apparently fought back with such gusto until, she submitted and enthusiastically engaged in sex to the point it “made the whores back home look like nuns” or something like that.
Have you or do you have a desire to statues of Columbus and Robert E. Lee down in the nearest city where one exists?
Lunar eclipses are visible anywhere on the night side of earth. Unlike solar eclipses, which can only be seen over a small area.
The Real Reason is that Columbus brought Catholicism to the new world.
I love this historic event!
I admire Christopher Columbus, not because he was Italian, Genovese, or whatever, I admire him because he had stones the size of beachballs to do what he did.
As you said, it was historic. Sure, someone else would have eventually done it, just like someone would have flown across the Atlantic if Charles Lindbergh hadn’t done it, or walked on the moon if Neil Armstrong hadn’t.
But they didn’t.
The Norsemen people keep referring to didn’t make it back to their homeland and set up a relay of people who kept coming over. If they did, that would be called a discovery. But it wasn’t. Shipwrecked sailors have found undiscovered islands, but nobody gives a hoot who they are, if it wasn’t memorialized and followed up on.
Nothing against the Scandinavians who clamor for Leif Erikson to get credit, but it sounds a lot like me to the countries that over the years wanted to re-write history and claim Columbus for their own, saying he was really Spanish, or Portuguese, or whatever.
Columbus was the one who did it. Columbus made it here, and he was trying to make it here, as a part of his journey to the Orient, not blown off course and shipwrecked. He not only came here, he made it back and told everyone about it.
Then to show it was no fluke, came back two more times, and the third trip broke his health.
First European to see the New World. He was also the first European to see a cyclonic ocean storm like a hurricane and described the precursors and sea states for future generations.
He was a real man.
Agreed! And his faith seemed legitimate. People call him greedy, but the God of the Bible advocated for Private ownership, industriousness, and personal property.
Heh, I found it interesting that the only curse he ever uttered was “May God take you.”
I've read something like this: somewhere...
Uh, the moon eclipse lasts around an hour and a half and can be seen from ANYWHERE on the side of the earth that faces the moon, at the same time.
A solar eclipse is a very small spot on the surface of the earth; seen only locally.
I saw my first (probably only) total solar eclipse just a few years ago in central Kentucky.
When I got back to central Indiana, folks asked what was the big deal? We didn't see much at all.
Well, the Mormons claim that they have a LOT of JEWISH dna in their bodies and...
I shudda read ahead.
TWICE...
No, I didn’t follow that thread...I did laugh...I went back and took a look, and I am familiar with that study which I have been interested in previously...it is illuminating.
Medicine is different, though. The point I was making is medicine is highly regimented and regulated for a reason, to prevent harm. It has to be. If something goes wrong and a patient is harmed, one of the very first questions is: Did you follow the protocols and procedures?
If the answer is no...you better have a really, really good reason for why you deviated.
When I was in the US Navy, I worked for the better part of four years on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier.
As a young 18 year old guy, I remember vividly one of my superiors, a Chief Petty Officer in charge of our “Line Division”, which is where all the new guys go and become “Plane Captains” which is like being the gas station attendant for the plane...you strap the pilot in, clean the windshield, make sure the oil and hydraulic levels are correct, that kind of thing. It gets you oriented to whole plane before you move onto your specialty, which in my case, was the jet engine.
Anyway, this Chief had all of us sitting there on our first day out at sea after leaving Norfolk, and he said something like this:
“I need to say something which I want you to listen carefully to and commit to. We are going to train you how to do tasks in very specific ways. Some of these jobs are going to seem rather useless, and some will be inefficient. All of you are smart enough, and there will come a time where you will look at a job we have trained you to do, and think you have a better, easier, more efficient way of doing it. DO NOT DO IT. Do not deviate from your training. The flight deck of an aircraft carrier is an extremely dangerous place. Those rules you have been taught, those tasks you have been trained in were learned in blood. People have been injured and died, and many of those tasks that you see as inefficient are set up that way because something bad happened, a plane crashed, or someone was injured or killed. Stick to your training, and stick to it exactly as you were taught.”
The point is, in medicine, it is the same. Almost every process and procedure has been put in place to prevent a bad outcome, or been put in place BECAUSE of a bad outcome. It isn’t just people blindly following orders. And this is ingrained at all levels of medicine, from top to bottom. Everything from the process to slide a patient from a bed to a gurney, to having your hands inside a patient stitching up their internal organs has techniques, processes, and procedures that must be followed, and like working on a flight deck, many of those were learned in blood. They hammer home the rigidity and inflexibility of these, because they do not want people freelancing, and it is burned in.
That is why I opined that in the medical community, it is possible these things might get kicked further and further up the chain. With respect to this particular aspect (Informed Consent) I assure you, NOBODY wants to perform ANY kind of procedure and end up being in violation of Informed Consent processes and procedures, because that is just asking for fines, disciplinary action, the whole nine yards.
The Left, in their Alinskyite clothing, all too willingly want to use our own rules against us. This is something I have no problem with using against their tyranny, but I don’t want to portray medical personnel as willing to kill people just to follow orders from above. I suggest we use their desire to follow orders from above to PREVENT them from causing us harm...:)
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