What The Heck Happened To Columbus??

[PoliticalChic]

Liberalism happened to Chris.

1. Christopher Columbus suffers from the fate of all those who run counter to what ever the Left wishes to advance at the moment.




2. At the start, and for hundreds of years, Columbus was considered a hero, responsible for "...one small step for man,one giant leap for mankind."

The problem is that his endeavors, and praise thereof, were seen as proxy for the spirit of commerce, capitalism, and even of the greatness of America.


3. But Columbus' repute peaked by the end of the 19th century.....coincidentally, just when collectivism, Progressivism, began to gain momentum. One certainly shouldn't expect to see this kind of endorsement: the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, 1893, announced that "1492 was not just an important historical date, but a turning point in the emancipation of mankind."
Royal, R., "1492 And All That: Political Manipulations of History," p.10.





4. And poor Columbus was on the wrong side of not just capitalism, but of religion as well! Because of him, Christian missionaries preached the Gospel where it had never been before.

a. There was even a movement for his canonisation. Although the Vatican would not agree to this Pope Leo XIII issued an encyclical, Quarto abeunte saeculo, which praised Columbus in the highest terms:
'For the exploit is in itself the highest and grandest which any age has ever seen accomplished by man; and he who achieved it, for the greatness of mind and heart, can be compared to but few in the history of humanity. The Pope especially commended Columbus for bringing Christianity to ‘a mighty multitude, cloaked in miserable darkness, given over to evil rites, and the superstitious worship of vain gods’
Quoted in Royal, Ibid, p.11.




5. Jump to the 1992 Quincentenary, a century into Progressive influence, and things looked very different for poor Chris.

a. All sorts of writings objected that he hadn't really discovered America! The Indians were here...and they weren't waiting around to be discovered.

b. Columbus and the Europeans were accused of exploiting the Indians, of brutally
mistreating and murdering them by the million, of infecting them with European diseases to which they had no resistance, and of making them slaves in their own country. Christopher Columbus stood accused of genocide. Russell Means of the American Indian Movement claimed that Columbus was worse than Hitler! http://cfbportal.schoolwires.net/cm...nstance/3193/colonization/WorldsCollide06.pdf

c. Even the churches turned on Columbus!
Even The US National Council of Churches issued a statement on the quincentenary in which advanced the bogus claim of ‘genocide.
transformcolumbusdayalliance



Columbus never rode on a bus....but he got thrown under it!

 

[Delta4Embassy]

As we know now, Columbus was not the first European to make it to the North American continent. Vikings had done it among half a dozen others. And unlike Columbus, they didn't subjugate and massacre the locals in the name of Christianity.

North America was doing a helluva lot better before missionaries arrived. Seems to me it wasn't until after missionaries eliminated native religions that things went to hell in a hulahoop.

 

[Moonglow]

2. At the start, and for hundreds of years, Columbus was considered a hero, responsible for "...one small step for man,one giant leap for mankind."

That's funny, cause the Polynesians made old Chris look like a ferry boat captain.....

 

[Moonglow]

4. And poor Columbus was on the wrong side of not just capitalism, but of religion as well! Because of him, Christian missionaries preached the Gospel where it had never been before.

Someone had to pray over the murder of the natives that were enslaved by that great navigator, when he needed wealth to make it worth his christian time...

 

[JakeStarkey]

Wait for PC's reaction when she finds out Columbus was really the pilot of the USS FDR.

 

[rightwinger]

As we know now, Columbus was not the first European to make it to the North American continent. Vikings had done it among half a dozen others. And unlike Columbus, they didn't subjugate and massacre the locals in the name of Christianity.

North America was doing a helluva lot better before missionaries arrived. Seems to me it wasn't until after missionaries eliminated native religions that things went to hell in a hulahoop.

The difference was they didn't do anything with their discovery. The Vikings just landed set up camp for a while and returned without saying much.

Once Columbus landed, the genie was out of the bottle and the European occupation of the new world was on

 

[PoliticalChic]

4. And poor Columbus was on the wrong side of not just capitalism, but of religion as well! Because of him, Christian missionaries preached the Gospel where it had never been before.

Someone had to pray over the murder of the natives that were enslaved by that great navigator, when he needed wealth to make it worth his christian time...

6. But, by and large, the most powerful weapon used against Columbus was an iteration of Leftism known as environmentalism.


At the heart of the charges against Chris the Leftist/environmentalists claimed:

a. the exploitation of the native population,

b. Judeo-Christian attitudes which placed man above nature, and

c. denying the 'noble savages' of their ability to live in harmony with Mother Earth.



7. An example of the juvenile myths passed off as science, by the Left:

" The ecological agenda is what many indigenous peoples believe can, and must, unite all peoples in 1992. That agenda calls for everyone to take aggressive action to stop the
destruction of the Earth, essentially to end the biological, technological, and ecological invasion/conquest that began with Columbus’ ill-fated voyage 500 years ago."
Winona LaDuke, "We Are Still Here", Sojourners, Vol 20, No 8, October 1991, p.16.


b. Even National Geographic jumped on that bandwagon: In ‘1491: America Before Columbus’, told its readers that Native Americans were closer to nature than we are, living in a more harmonious relationship with their environment.
Brandenburg, Jim, et al. "The Land They Knew: A Portfolio" (1491: America Before Columbus).National Geographic180, no. 4 (October 1991): 14-100.




The core of environmentalism is a hatred for mankind. They want mass infanticide, zero population growth, reduced standards of living, and vegetarianism.


"Liberal environmentalists admire the living situation of the earthworm and believe that humans should emulate it." Coulter





And to that bogus point about the intimate relationship between the Native Americans and the environment...

.....no human beings have been as destructive of their fauna and flora as the 'noble savages' were.

 

[JakeStarkey]

And to that bogus point about the intimate relationship between the Native Americans and the environment........no human beings have been as destructive of their fauna and flora as the 'noble savages' were.

Yup, their factories and chemicals really fucked up the environment.

 

[PoliticalChic]

8. As stated in the OP..." Christopher Columbus suffers from the fate of all those who run counter to what ever the Left wishes to advance at the moment.."


Kirkpatrick Sale, founder of the New York Green Party, did a number on Columbus, battering the poor guy with total nonsense about the aboriginal inhabitants, and how Columbus' appearance ended Shangri-La.


His book, a murderous attack on Columbus specifically, and Europeans in general, suggests we get back to nature:

" There is only one way to live in America, and there can be only one way, and that is as Americans - the original Americans - for that is what the earth of America demands. We have tried for five centuries to resist that simple truth. We resist it further only at risk of the imperilment - worse, the likely destruction - of the earth."
"The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy," by Kirkpatrick Sale, p. 369




Of course, those "original Americans," the Asians who went over the Bering Straits, slaughtered every animal they could, driving many to extinction, and burned down whole forests for the fun of it.


9. " Unfortunately for Sale, and for others who see the adoption of traditional native attitudes towards the environment as the means of salvation, evidence has been mounting for some time that seriously calls into question the notion of the noble eco-savage. It seems that native peoples may not have lived by a conservationist ethic in the past, and that the indigenous peoples of the
earth today may have little to teach us about caring for the environment. We need to disentangle the myth from the reality."
"Wild in Woods: The Myth of the Noble Eco-Savage," by Robert Whelan, p.27.


Well, Liberals live on myths.

 

[JakeStarkey]

PC is busily creating new reactionary far right nonsense.

 

[rightwinger]

Columbus was a myth

He was neither as wonderful as he was portrayed for 500 years or as bad as he is portrayed today

He was a product of his times. 500 years ago, slavery was accepted. It was routinely acknowledged that white men were superior to the godless "savages". That he acted that way is not surprising. No other explorer would have acted differently than Columbus

But mostly, Columbus was in it for the money. He was looking to maximize the wealth he gained from his new discovery and was willing to do what it took to get it.

 

[Correll]

And to that bogus point about the intimate relationship between the Native Americans and the environment........no human beings have been as destructive of their fauna and flora as the 'noble savages' were.

Yup, their factories and chemicals really fucked up the environment.

Slash and burn agriculture and over hunting.

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

Christopher Columbus was a genocidal maniac — AND a bumbling idiot
Christopher Columbus was a genocidal maniac — AND a bumbling idiot

ommunities across America are beginning to embrace Indigenous People’s Day. Is this an example of political correctness run amok, as conservatives tend to see it? Or, as are liberals right in arguing that it’s an important acknowledgement that beneath the foundation of our vaunted Western values lie the scorched remains of millions of native Americans?

Allow me to offer a Third Way.

It’s true that by modern standards, Christopher Columbus was clearly a genocidal maniac, although his brutality toward indigenous people wasn’t all that exceptional in the context of early European colonialism.

But even if you don’t care about that, we still shouldn’t celebrate Christopher Columbus for the same reason we don’t take a day off to honor André Maginot for his defensive line in France prior to World War II, or the guy who thought up New Coke for his marketing genius: Columbus was a self-aggrandizing jerk who largely stumbled into the history books despite getting a whole bunch of things wrong.

 

[rightwinger]

Columbus was no better or no worse than his contemporaries

 

[rightwinger]

PC is busily creating new reactionary far right nonsense.

I'm surprised PC hasn't turned this into an anti- Obama rant yet

 

[PoliticalChic]

O'Sullivan's First Law (a.k.a. O'Sullivan's Law), paraphrased by George Will as stating that any institution that is not libertarian and classically liberal will, over time, become collectivist and statist.


Further.....O'Sullivan's First Law: "All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing. I cite as supporting evidence the ACLU, the Ford Foundation, and the Episcopal Church. The reason is, of course, that people who staff such bodies tend to be the sort who don't like private profit, business, making money, the current organization of society, and, by extension, the Western world. At which point Michels's Iron Law of Oligarchy takes over — and the rest follows."
http://old.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback-jos062603.asp




How about the Smithsonian Institution?
Did they become Leftist, and advance the mythology of that 'noble savage'????
Yup.

10. The view that the American Indians lived in such a state of harmony with nature is not to confined to environmental activists like Kirkpatrick Sale. Even a scholarly body like the Smithsonian Institution could claim in one of its publications on Christopher Columbus that:
"...pre-Columbian America was still the First Eden, a pristine natural kingdom. The native people were transparent in the landscape, living as natural elements of the ecosphere. Their world, the New World of Columbus, was a world of barely perceptible human disturbance."
Shetler, "Seeds of Change: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy, " The Smithsonian Institution, 1991, p.226 The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the

OMG!!!



I'd best repeat the truth:
Of course, those "original Americans," the Asians who went over the Bering Straits, slaughtered every animal they could, driving many to extinction, and burned down whole forests for the fun of it.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Yep, those crazy natives with their chemicals and exhaust and machine guns.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Christopher Columbus was a genocidal maniac — AND a bumbling idiot
Christopher Columbus was a genocidal maniac — AND a bumbling idiot

ommunities across America are beginning to embrace Indigenous People’s Day. Is this an example of political correctness run amok, as conservatives tend to see it? Or, as are liberals right in arguing that it’s an important acknowledgement that beneath the foundation of our vaunted Western values lie the scorched remains of millions of native Americans?

Allow me to offer a Third Way.

It’s true that by modern standards, Christopher Columbus was clearly a genocidal maniac, although his brutality toward indigenous people wasn’t all that exceptional in the context of early European colonialism.

But even if you don’t care about that, we still shouldn’t celebrate Christopher Columbus for the same reason we don’t take a day off to honor André Maginot for his defensive line in France prior to World War II, or the guy who thought up New Coke for his marketing genius: Columbus was a self-aggrandizing jerk who largely stumbled into the history books despite getting a whole bunch of things wrong.

Ooooo......look how nicely you parrot what they programmed into you in government school!!

Good boy!

Doggie treat?

 

[PoliticalChic]

PC is busily creating new reactionary far right nonsense.

I'm surprised PC hasn't turned this into an anti- Obama rant yet

I'm not at all surprised that you were unable to dispute any of the posts I provided.
Contrary to your avi.....
...you must be a Liberal, huh?

 

[JakeStarkey]

PC is busily creating new reactionary far right nonsense.

I'm surprised PC hasn't turned this into an anti- Obama rant yet

I'm not at all surprised that you were unable to dispute any of the posts I provided.
Contrary to your avi........you must be a Liberal, huh?

You have not made any worthy comments, so there is nothing to dispute. We all know you are a loon. When are you going to tie FDR to all of this?