Free Republic

Monday’s federal holiday dedicated to Christopher Columbus is highlighting the ongoing divide between those who view the explorer as a representative of Italian American history and others horrified by an annual tribute that ignores native people whose lives and culture were forever changed by colonialism. Spurred by national calls for racial equity, communities across the U.S. took a deeper look at Columbus’ legacy in recent years — pairing or replacing it with Indigenous Peoples Day. On Friday, President Joe Biden issued the first presidential proclamation of “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” the most significant boost yet to efforts to refocus the federal...

Today is the second Monday of October and thus is Columbus Day. For many of us, this is little more than a three-day weekend. However, it is seen as an unjust celebration of “whiteness” and imperialism for an increasing number of Americans and signifies how uniquely evil America is. This hatred for Columbus and the misunderstanding of what it is he did is nothing new. In fact, the earliest criticisms of Columbus were made about a century ago by the old Democratic party institution, The Ku Klux Klan. The Klan did not want Americans celebrating a southern European Catholic like...

If Columbus Day was a Bill O’Reilly book:(Apologies to Michael Ramirez. And, I guess, Bill O’Reilly.)Gary Kasparov, former chess slave under the former Soviet Union regime, has this to say about woke America’s commitment to cancelling Christopher Columbus:(Columbus) achieved great things and is worthy of being honored for them with a national holiday. His incredible feats of exploration were due to individual qualities that Americans should find admirable, and once did in near unanimity. Holding historical figures to modern standards of morality is a method of antihistorical political control—much like the pseudohistory I grew up being taught in the Soviet...

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...

Every Columbus Day, we are treated to recycled howls from the left who insist the day be rebranded as Indigenous People’s Day, in honor of the millions of Native Americans displaced, enslaved, or killed during the centuries preceding the discovery of America. We hear terms like “colonialism,” “systemic oppression,” “cultural genocide,” and “stolen land,” thrown around. Here is a brief list of the European Indigenous Peoples who were victimized by invading armies and migrations, by colonialism, systemic oppression, and cultural genocide, but whose sufferings are rarely if ever acknowledged by the left: The Greek city-statesFrom 492 to 449 BC, Persia...

Republican Governor of South Dakota Kristi Noem has faced criticism from both sides of the political spectrum on Sunday for telling state residents “don’t wait until Monday to celebrate Native American heritage” in an official statement. Noem only referred to October 11 as Native Americans’ Day, and omitted any reference to the date’s long national significance as Columbus Day.“The second Monday in October has been recognized as a federal holiday since 1968. In 1990, South Dakota was the first state to do things a little differently than the rest of the nation,” Noem said. “In South Dakota, we recognize Monday,...

Monuments to Christopher Columbus are regularly vandalized throughout the Americas, but Spain remains faithful to his memory. Last week, I visited Seville Cathedral, where his supposed remains are carried shoulder-high by massive statues representing the kings of Castille, Leon, Navarre, and Aragon.... ...The anniversary of his reaching the New World, Oct. 12, is Spain’s national day. The only concession to modern sensibilities is that it is now known as the Día de la Hispanidad rather than the Día de la Raza. Seville’s Plaza de España is connected to the Plaza de America by streets named after Hernan Cortes and Francisco...