Why Do We Celebrate Columbus Day?

[Bullfighter]

More "feel sorry for the Indians" crap. Try to get an Indian to move from the casinos the government built for them and live in a teepee today. HA!

Why do they never tell of how the Indians really were. Like during the French and Indian War, the Indians would kill soldiers that surrendered and butcher their bodies. This horrifyied every soldier that witnessed it and proved that the Indians could not be dealt with in a normal manner.

Get over that phony "feel sorry for the native" public school education crap that NATIVES forced American children to learn. The same crap is being pulled by Mexicans.

Feel sorry for me. Feed me. Clothe me. Get me cable TV. Buy me an SUV big enough to squeeze my 15 relatives in.

It's all shit!

 

[rightwinger]

It’s time again to honor the great man that discovered America. To me this has always seemed a bit strange since he did not discover America and his greatness is certainly debatable.

Leif Ericson landed on our shores 500 years before Columbus. There exists cartographic evidence, according to cartographic expert Armando Cortesao, that Portuguese explorers visited the Americas and mapped the area in 1424. There is also evidence of other early explorers reaching our shores. Of course we always discount the first real discovers of American, the native Americans.

Well, as far as a being a great man…. He was a slave trader who heartlessly took men and women away form their families in order lessen his failure to find a new trade route. He oversaw and participated in the rape and murder of innocent villagers. His contemporaries despised him. As governor of Santo Domingo on Hispaniola, he was a despot who kept all profits for himself and his brothers, and was loathed by the colonists whose lives he controlled. Attempts were made on his life and he was actually sent back to Spain in chains at one point after his third voyage. During his fourth voyage, he and his men were stranded on Jamaica for a year where his ships rotted: no one wanted to travel there from Hispaniola to save him. He was also a cheapskate: after promising a reward to whomever spotted land first on his 1492 voyage, he refused to pay up when sailor Rodrigo de Triana did so, giving the reward to himself instead because he had seen a “glow” the night before. However, one of the greatest curses he brought to American was smallpox which killed as much as 400,000 native Americans. A great man, I don't think so.

Previously, elevation of Columbus to a hero caused people to name cities (and a country, Colombia) after him and many places still celebrate Columbus Day, but now days people tend to see Columbus for what he really was: a brave, but very flawed, human being. Frankly, I just can't figure why we set aside a special day in his honor.

Who Discovered America? Not Christopher Columbus, That's for Certain - Associated Content - associatedcontent.com
The Truth About Christopher Columbus
AmericanHeritage.com / Christopher Columbus, Hero and Villain

Leif Erickson may have actually landed here first but did nothing with the discovery. Its like being the first to find the cure for cancer and then forgetting where you put the formula. After Columbus landed, exploration of the new continent took off.

Yes, Columbus traded in slaves. Looking at it from the 21st Century, it looks despicable. But in the world of the 15th Century, it was the accepted norm. If Columbus didn't support slavery, there were thousands who would take his place. The 15th was brutal and Columbus was no worse than any of his contemporaries.

 

[Dick Tuck]

I'm just happy that whoever named us, didn't call us Vespucci Land.

 

[Big Black Dog]

Which sounds better and would look better printed on a map? Columbus, Ohio or Vespucci, Ohio? Be real...

 

[BlindBoo]

Capitalism Magazine - The Christopher Columbus Controversy: Western Civilization vs. Primitivism

Capitalism Magazine - Christopher Columbus: Multiculturalism vs. Objective History

"Columbus is routinely vilified as a symbol of slavery and genocide, and the celebration of his arrival likened to a celebration of Hitler and the Holocaust."

Indeed. Do you know that by 1535, the original inhabitants of La Isla Española were virtually extinct, and were completely extinct a generation later. Not a quick as Hitlers "Final Solution" but certainly just as ruthless. They would often hunt down natives for sport.

Columbus, The Original American Hero

"It does mean that Columbus brought America to the attention of the civilized world"

No nothing could be further from the truth. Europe was the center of barbarism, warfare and general misery. It was an overcrowded, disease infested world whose raw materials had all been used up. It was the advances in warefare (amor, gun powder) that won the day. It was the need for raw material that drove the expantion. Not the noble deeds, thoughts or words of Aristotle, Galileo, Newton....ect.

We know very little about the state of the natives civilization because it was all destroyed. We'll never knows what was destroyed back then by the barbaric hoards and religious zealots.

"barbarism, warfare and general misery"

Boo-hoo

We know very little about the state of the native's civilization because they had so little of it. They had barbarism, warfare and misery long before Western Europe showed up.

Columbus Day the holiday (likely of the Italian American lobby, lol, look at multi-culti me) in the United States of America is about the opening of the New World to a new way to live in it for all mankind. It's a celebration of Western philosophy that followed quickly upon discovery. Discovery, the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment all made the USA possible in their path.

Since most everything was destroyed the claim that they has so little civilization simple cannot be backed up with fact can it?

Hahahaha, a new way to live. More like a new way to kill, and exploitation for the Spanish. And then after the Spanish decline came the other europeans to exploit the pristine forrests.

 

[konradv]

Geeze I thought asian americans had been here for thousands of years before columbus. Not to mention Columbus didn't even land on current American soil.

That depends whether you consider Puerto Rico to be American territory. They're considered citizens, so I say "yes". That also brings up the controversy of whether Spanish is an American language. For the same reason I also say "yes".

 

[Two Thumbs]

Columbus discovered the America(s), not the land that became the United States.

He then let the world know it was there, with people, and could be exploited for "freedom" and profit.

So even if he was a jackass, if he didn't do it when he did, there is no telling what would have happened.

So yeah, I think he deserves 1 day.

 

[Flopper]

I think we celebrate Columbus Day simply because it's part of our tradition. We know others came before Columbus, but it is Columbus we remember as the discoverer of America. Never mind who came to America first, nor the reasons for the voyages, nor how the native Americans were treated, the fact is he came and all of Europe became aware that there was a land across the sea, ripe for exploration, plunder, and settlement.

To me it makes sense that we are commemorating not the life of the man but the event.

 

[Ragnar]

"Columbus is routinely vilified as a symbol of slavery and genocide, and the celebration of his arrival likened to a celebration of Hitler and the Holocaust."

Indeed. Do you know that by 1535, the original inhabitants of La Isla Española were virtually extinct, and were completely extinct a generation later. Not a quick as Hitlers "Final Solution" but certainly just as ruthless. They would often hunt down natives for sport.

Columbus, The Original American Hero

"It does mean that Columbus brought America to the attention of the civilized world"

No nothing could be further from the truth. Europe was the center of barbarism, warfare and general misery. It was an overcrowded, disease infested world whose raw materials had all been used up. It was the advances in warefare (amor, gun powder) that won the day. It was the need for raw material that drove the expantion. Not the noble deeds, thoughts or words of Aristotle, Galileo, Newton....ect.

We know very little about the state of the natives civilization because it was all destroyed. We'll never knows what was destroyed back then by the barbaric hoards and religious zealots.

"barbarism, warfare and general misery"

Boo-hoo

We know very little about the state of the native's civilization because they had so little of it. They had barbarism, warfare and misery long before Western Europe showed up.

Columbus Day the holiday (likely of the Italian American lobby, lol, look at multi-culti me) in the United States of America is about the opening of the New World to a new way to live in it for all mankind. It's a celebration of Western philosophy that followed quickly upon discovery. Discovery, the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment all made the USA possible in their path.

Since most everything was destroyed the claim that they has so little civilization simple cannot be backed up with fact can it?

Hahahaha, a new way to live. More like a new way to kill, and exploitation for the Spanish. And then after the Spanish decline came the other europeans to exploit the pristine forrests.

Have you not understood anything said on this topic to this point? Columbus Day is about the big picture and opening the New World to a better way of life. Yeah, 500+ years later the historical details show one primitive culture being cornholed buy a slightly less primitive culture but that's hardly shameful, Hell that's the story of mankind since day uno.

"Pristine forest"? Unless your some kind of cartoon fairy my guess is you would be dead in three days if lost in a pristine wood. How does one "exploit" a forest anyway. Build a house in it? (a school? a factory? a hospital? a museum?) Newsflash Sparky, that's the stuff of civilization. Really man, grow up.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Probably because without him we wouldn't be where we are.

Actually, there is considerable proof that Europeans were here prior to the ancestors of the "Native Americans."

The remains of "Kennewick Man" were discovered in 1996, and were caucasian.

The story is also interesting, because in it we can see, again, the nexus of science and politics: the Indians didn't want it to establish the idea that they were not first here, so President Clinton had the Corp of Engineers close off the area to study.

The discovery of a human ancestor variously referred to as Kennewick or Richland Man has shed light on the complexity of human immigration to the western hemisphere and ignited a controversy that may affect the future of paleoanthropology in the United States.


"Discovery

On July 28, 1996 two young men encountered a human skull in the Columbia River at Kennewick, Washington. That evening I was contacted by Coroner Floyd Johnson, for whom I conduct skeletal forensics. I joined him at the site and helped police recover much of the skeleton. During the next month, under an ARPA permit issued by the Walla Walla District Corps of Engineers, I recovered more wave-scattered bones from the reservoir mud. Throughout the process, I maintained contact with the Corps, which interacted with two local Indian Tribes.

The completeness and unusually good condition of the skeleton, presence of caucasoid traits, lack of definitive Native-American characteristics, and the association with an early homestead led me to suspect that the bones represented a European settler.

The man lacks definitive characteristics of the classic mongoloid stock to which modern Native Americans belong....On August 30, four days after the startling radiocarbon result, the Corps insisted all studies be terminated and soon took possession of the skeleton."
Kennewick Man
(emphasis mine)

So, the story of Columbus may be moot....

and the left may find a new object to revile.

 

[Moon]

Meh. Holidays are political creations, not historical ones. Congress wanted a day off in October and decided they liked a holiday called Columbus Day. Who knows, maybe they'll change it to Lindsay Lohan Day or something else equally meaningless.

 

[Trajan]

I guess we ought to get mad at Latin America etc. for celebrating discovery day or the race day.....hummmmm...been going on for a hundred and fifty years give or take.....those bastards!!!!

It was a sop from FDR to the Italian immigrants here as a formal holiday.

 

[Political Junky]

The History Channel has a show, "Who Really Discovered America", and it's great. It goes back thousands of years.

 

[JakeStarkey]

In 1492, Europe was lagging behind the Middle East and China and India is the civilized arts.

In 1492, West African cultures had a better grasp of proto-capitalism than any society in the world.

In 1600, at least 90% of Native Americans had perished, more than fifteen million individuals.

The Spanish empire assimilated the indios into a stratified culture that recognized their souls as God given and codified their legal status in society.

The French in North America generally respected Native American cultures, although the 'beaver wars' (down, Samson, down) disrupted entire regions and led to the extinction of several tribes.

The English would not accommodate and would not assimilate the Native American in general. The only possible reprisal by the Native Americans was battle, which inevitably they lost.

Having said all the above, I still believe if the colors of the Africans, Europeans, and Native Americans had been exchanged but not the cultures, then the outcome would have been the same.

 

[Flopper]

Meh. Holidays are political creations, not historical ones. Congress wanted a day off in October and decided they liked a holiday called Columbus Day. Who knows, maybe they'll change it to Lindsay Lohan Day or something else equally meaningless.

Hell, they take the whole month off. They won't be back till Nov. 15th. It really gauls me that we pay these suckers to spend a month and half at home campaigning after spending most this year campaigning.

 

[Flopper]

In 1492, Europe was lagging behind the Middle East and China and India is the civilized arts.

In 1492, West African cultures had a better grasp of proto-capitalism than any society in the world.

In 1600, at least 90% of Native Americans had perished, more than fifteen million individuals.

The Spanish empire assimilated the indios into a stratified culture that recognized their souls as God given and codified their legal status in society.

The French in North America generally respected Native American cultures, although the 'beaver wars' (down, Samson, down) disrupted entire regions and led to the extinction of several tribes.

The English would not accommodate and would not assimilate the Native American in general. The only possible reprisal by the Native Americans was battle, which inevitably they lost.

Having said all the above, I still believe if the colors of the Africans, Europeans, and Native Americans had been exchanged but not the cultures, then the outcome would have been the same.

“Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.”
Robert Orben

 

[NYcarbineer]

Wow. What pieces of poorly-written, masturbatory garbage. I especially like how they say Columbus should be excused for not holding modern values, but then look down upon the Native Americans for having non-Western values.

I hope someone brought a tube-sock.

If it weren't for Columbus you would have never been born.

Because of Columbus, countless native Americans never were born.

 

[Dick Tuck]

In 1492, Europe was lagging behind the Middle East and China and India is the civilized arts.

In 1492, West African cultures had a better grasp of proto-capitalism than any society in the world.

In 1600, at least 90% of Native Americans had perished, more than fifteen million individuals.

The Spanish empire assimilated the indios into a stratified culture that recognized their souls as God given and codified their legal status in society.

The French in North America generally respected Native American cultures, although the 'beaver wars' (down, Samson, down) disrupted entire regions and led to the extinction of several tribes.

The English would not accommodate and would not assimilate the Native American in general. The only possible reprisal by the Native Americans was battle, which inevitably they lost.

Having said all the above, I still believe if the colors of the Africans, Europeans, and Native Americans had been exchanged but not the cultures, then the outcome would have been the same.

“Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.”
Robert Orben

They should have set up metal detectors at Plymouth Rock.

 

[uscitizen]

Does anyone besides govt employees and Banks celebrate coloumbus day?

 

[Dick Tuck]

Does anyone besides govt employees and Banks celebrate coloumbus day?

The Mafia used to. I'm not sure if they still do.