View Full Version : Happy Columbus Day
I’m glad he made the trip.
And happy Puerto Rico Friendship Day!
And to those in Virginia, happy Yorktown Victory Day!
If in Hawaii, happy Discoverer's Day!
Vermont or Oregon? Happy Indigenous People' Day!!
South Dakota - happy Native American Day!
Good grief, I didn't know about all this controversy until I looked it up to see if we had mail today (on my phone, in front of my husband). Here in MO, no mail/ no banks and it's still Columbus Day.
In Canada, it's Happy Thanksgiving!
If he hadn't made the trip maybe my Puritan ancestors would have stayed in England, the persecution would have passed, and now I'd have national healthcare rather than paying $15k a year.
All joking (not really a joke) aside, I do appreciate the innovation and hard work that went into building this country. I'm not thrilled that we had to wipe out its inhabitants in the process, but you take the good with the bad. They got to build Mohegan Sun, and we got to fulfill our Manifest Destiny.
I am not a Columbus fan. But it is nice to have the day off work.
I think Columbus gets a bad rap these days. It's pretty well established that the first settlers on the continent came from the west around 14,000 years earlier, across what is now the Bering Strait from Siberia, and that various Norse explorers beat Columbus by about 500 years from the east. There's even reason to believe the Chinese thoroughly explored North and South America nearly one hundred years before 1492.
If Columbus had never lived, the result would have been the same as explorers from every point of the world came here and established governments claimed portions of it as their own. That's the history of the world, not just North America.
I'm usually skeptical of revisionist history, but it's time to retire Columbus Day. He may have had an adventurous spirit, but he was basically in it for the money and his treatment of the natives of Hispaniola was nothing short of genocidal. He can be noted, but he shouldn't be celebrated.
I'm usually skeptical of revisionist history, but it's time to retire Columbus Day. He may have had an adventurous spirit, but he was basically in it for the money and his treatment of the natives of Hispaniola was nothing short of genocidal. He can be noted, but he shouldn't be celebrated.
While I cannot disagree with your points, I would ask if he was any different than any other of his time? Do we evaluate within historical context?
While I cannot disagree with your points, I would ask if he was any different than any other of his time? Do we evaluate within historical context?
I guess we might, and Alan is right that if it weren't Columbus it would have been someone else, but it seems that colonialism is celebrated only by those who occupy the natives. We can argue over whether or not we are better off because Columbus "discovered" America, or because India fell under the British Empire for a certain number of years, but to Alan's point: is colonialism the history of the world? Can we celebrate our success at extinguishing the indigenous? What makes the white man so special?
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day
Can we celebrate our success at extinguishing the indigenous?
No, we have to give credit to disease such as measles and smallpox.
What makes the white man so special?The evolution of antibodies?
No, we have to give credit to disease such as measles and smallpox.
The evolution of antibodies?[/FONT][/COLOR][/LEFT]
Really??
As my Scottish MIL would say, "give me a break."
Really??
As my Scottish MIL would say, "give me a break."
http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-3
"Discussions about genocide in the Americas often begin with the moment of initial contact between Europeans and Native people and emphasize the catastrophic impact of European diseases (especially smallpox and measles) for which Indians had no acquired immunity. Until the 1960s, scholars lacked an appreciation for the massive loss of life from what Alfred Crosby termed “virgin soil epidemics,” and so they drastically understated the size of the pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere population. A standard estimate was 8 million for the entire hemisphere and 1 million north of the Rio Grande. In the 1960s, however, the anthropologist Henry Dobyns took account of disease to provide much higher estimates of 75 million for the hemisphere and 10–12 million north of Mexico. Although Dobyns’s estimates have been hotly debated, even advocates of much lower figures acknowledge the impact of devastating epidemics.1 (http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-3#acrefore-9780199329175-e-3-note-1)
Advocates of the “yes it was genocide” position have generally accepted high estimates for the pre-Columbian population and a correspondingly very high figure for initial depopulation. If 75 million people lived in in the Western Hemisphere in 1491 and the death toll from epidemic disease was 70, 80, or even 90 percent (as was sometimes the case), the sheer numbers (50–60 million) are overwhelming and compel recognition as genocide when measured against the numbers for commonly accepted cases of genocide in the twentieth century."
Sorry, Alan, what is your interpretation of that quote?
Sorry, Alan, what is your interpretation of that quote?Well, there's much more research on the subject than the couple of paragraphs provided but my interpretation is that perhaps as much as three quarters of the native population of the Americas died from diseases which Europeans had already developed antibodies.
Well, there's much more research on the subject than the couple of paragraphs provided but my interpretation is that perhaps as much as three quarters of the native population of the Americas died from diseases which Europeans had already developed antibodies.
So, we did indirectly kill the majority of them, just by virtue of our presence and our contamination of disease that they couldn't protect themselves against. In addition, you can't deny that we directly overcame them and forced them into reservations. Lucky that we were on the dominant side of this clash, isn't it?
So, we did indirectly kill the majority of them.....I can't speak for anyone else but I didn't and I suspect neither did you.
In addition, you can't deny that we directly overcame them and forced them into reservations. Nope, I never have denied it and never will.
Lucky that we were on the dominant side of this clash, isn't it? I think that was a little before our time but, yeah, I suppose so.
dado potato
10-8-18, 5:58pm
As is my tradition I planted garlic. Zemo and Killarney Red varieties this year.
iris lilies
10-8-18, 6:34pm
LDahl knew full well what he was stirring when he posted this.;)
I can't speak for anyone else but I didn't and I suspect neither did you.
Nope, I never have denied it and never will.
I think that was a little before our time but, yeah, I suppose so. [/FONT][/COLOR][/LEFT]
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Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
As is my tradition I planted garlic. Zemo and Killarney Red varieties this year.The traditional Columbus Day in my household is a birthday celebration. My wife on Oct 11th and my youngest brother on Oct 12th.
LDahl knew full well what he was stirring when he posted this.;)
I’m just pleased with myself for having the good sense to be born in America. Who knows, if not for Columbus I might be a Norwegian. Got nothing against Norway. There’s certainly no shame in being Norwegian. I just really like America.
I could apologize to history, but history wouldn’t care.
Alan, Happy birthday to your wife and your brother!!
LDAHL, there could be a worse fate than being born Norwegian. I think the Norwegians are pretty happy.
I was curious about Columbus and find out that the whole holiday because of Columbus discovering North America is a fraud.
The famous names of the ships he took on his famous 1492 trip across the Atlantic Ocean, the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria, probably weren’t really named Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria. The Santa Maria was also known at the time as La Gallega, meaning The Galician.” The Niña is now believed to be a nickname for a ship originally called the Santa Clara, and the Pinta was probably also a nickname, though the ship’s real name isn’t clear.
*Columbus didn’t “discover” America — he never set foot in North America.
During four separate trips that started with the one in 1492, Columbus landed on various Caribbean islands that are now the Bahamas as well as the island later called Hispaniola. He also explored the Central and South American coasts. But he didn’t reach North America, which, of course, was already inhabited by Native Americans, and he never thought he had found a new continent. You may also remember that it is believed that Norse explorer Leif Erikson reached Canada perhaps 500 years before Columbus was born, and there are some who believe that Phoenician sailors crossed the Atlantic much earlier.
The first Columbus Day celebration recorded in the United States was in New York on October 12th, 1792, held to honor Italian-American heritage. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937 proclaimed October 12th to be Columbus Day, a national holiday. In 1971, the holiday date was changed to the second Monday in October.
Online https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/10/14/christopher-columbus-3-things-you-think-he-did-that-he-didnt/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b3527e81abddsource:
ApatheticNoMore
10-9-18, 2:23am
How many people ever really "celebrated" it anyway, except maybe Italians. So all it becomes is a bunch of nagging of a few people with Italian heritage or else of people for getting a day off work, or for many not getting a day off work, at least having a lighter commute which is no small blessing.
Maybe what would have made a difference, rather than who was aboard the ship, is where it landed. Many countries engaged in the horrors of plantation slavery, which spread north from Hispaniola. If settlement had flowed south instead, from colder climates, and followed a pattern of Viking fishing and French fur trading, the story of the Americas could have been different. I don't know though. The French were extremely brutal in Haiti, and to this day it has never recovered.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day
Very enlightening article. By coincidence, a few months ago I picked up a copy of the bestseller, "Lies My Teacher Told Me - Everything your American History textbook got wrong." One discussion was about the pressure on textbook sellers to edit out anything unpleasant that would be unacceptable to school boards. Hence the schoolbooks in southern states were required to refer to the Civil War as the War Between the States. They also downplay the impact of hundreds of years of slavery in America, both in the North or South, and how that legacy still haunts us.
Teaching history has start with the truth, however hurtful or upsetting it may be to learn it.
ApatheticNoMore
10-9-18, 10:35am
I think for some the focus on the past has actually become an excuse to ignore the horrors of the present. "But things are much better now". Well in some ways yes, but overall, I don't know about that ....
The extent and cruelty of Spanish treatment of natives were chronicled in detail by Bartolomeo de las Casas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom%C3%A9_de_las_Casas), a contemporary of Columbus, and have been verified by countless historians thereafter.
As for applying contemporary standards of morality to people who lived hundreds of years ago, I'm not talking about condemning Columbus, just not lionizing him. IMO opinion true greatness, the kind that merits having a holiday named after you, consists not of just going with the flow of contemporary mores but rising above them. That's why our holidays are named after people like Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.
I spent Columbus Day evening gifting someone with time and a half or triple time for having to work a holiday. My house lost water pressure so I called the company that takes care of our community well. Did not realize the holiday went beyond government and banking to privately held water companies. By the time he got there there water was back on though spurting air. He got 3 hours holiday/overtime just for checking.
catherine
10-10-18, 10:30am
Here's perspective I haven't seen before. Has anyone else?
https://theoldschoolpatriot.com/columbus-real-history/
Here's perspective I haven't seen before. Has anyone else?
https://theoldschoolpatriot.com/columbus-real-history/
I’ve often wondered why there isn’t more interest in the long struggle to defend the Christian West from Islam. Sieges like Contantinople, Malta and Vienna. Battles like Tours, Manzikert and Lepanto. The Crusades. The Age of Discovery. The Reconquista. Thomas Jefferson dispatching an expedition to the shores of Tripoli. It would make a great mini-series.
Wasn't Islamic back in the time of Columbus more learned and tolerant than Christianity?
mschrisgo2
10-10-18, 9:04pm
I grew up in San Francisco, where Columbus Day was/is a Big Deal. It's long been a City holiday. It also, in more recent years, encomasses Fleet Week, with a parade of ships coming in through the Golden Gate, and every pier in town is full, mostly military ships. Then some of the ships are open for touring. The Blue Angels fly a fantastic airshow on the weekend just before Columbus Day.
There is always grumbling about the military cost, and the noise the Blue Angels make, but it is also a Huge money maker for the City. Thousands of people flock in from all around, it is a big party atmosphere, and the money flows pretty easily. Personally, I love it. I think we should get to see some of what our taxes pay for. Many cities have festivals, San Francisco has Fleet Week. It's not so much about "discovering America"' as it is celebrating voyages. ocean and air.
Wasn't Islamic back in the time of Columbus more learned and tolerant than Christianity?
They were conducting wars of conquest against any unbelievers they could reach as a matter of religious doctrine. They were raiding for slaves and loot throughout the Mediterranean. They were conscripting children as military slaves.
No doubt the ignorant primitives of Europe were wrong to fight back against all that learning and tolerance.
Ultralight
10-11-18, 7:44am
They were conducting wars of conquest against any unbelievers they could reach as a matter of religious doctrine. They were raiding for slaves and loot throughout the Mediterranean. They were conscripting children as military slaves.
No doubt the ignorant primitives of Europe were wrong to fight back against all that learning and tolerance.
Read the Quran. I have read it cover to cover, word for word. Every other page says something or other about "make the unbelievers drink boiling water" or "punish the polytheists" and so on. The Quran is scary stuff. It is scarier than the Old Testament.
Then after the Quran, dig into the Hadith. Frightening.
Ultralight
10-11-18, 7:45am
Wasn't Islamic back in the time of Columbus more learned and tolerant than Christianity?
Here is a suggestion you won't take: Read the Quran.
iris lilies
10-11-18, 10:04am
Read the Quran. I have read it cover to cover, word for word. Every other page says something or other about "make the unbelievers drink boiling water" or "punish the polytheists" and so on. The Quran is scary stuff. It is scarier than the Old Testament.
Then after the Quran, dig into the Hadith. Frightening.
In some circles, infidel, you are not really reading the Quran if you are not reading it in Arabic.
They were conducting wars of conquest against any unbelievers they could reach as a matter of religious doctrine. They were raiding for slaves and loot throughout the Mediterranean. They were conscripting children as military slaves.
No doubt the ignorant primitives of Europe were wrong to fight back against all that learning and tolerance.
Maybe then just less anti-Semitic as they respected all people of the book.
The Catholic Church hardly covered itself in glory what with starting the Crusades, torturing and murdering millions of (mostly) women in the
witchcraft trials, torturing, murdering, and scattering thousands via the Inquisition, and of course, raping millions of boys, women, girls over the ages.
I believe it was a Catholic priest (Googling: Fray Diego de Landa) who was responsible for burning priceless Mayan codices*. Meanwhile Muslim and Jewish scholars (the same ones that were booted off the Iberian Peninsula) were busy raising the intellectual bar among Spaniards. Their bloody history from wars to torture-killings to slavery and genocide is the reason I have little respect for most religions, not least of all the one of which I am nominally a member.
*A crime right up there with the burning of the library at Alexandria--a murder of carefully curated knowledge.
I know it’s the fashion to focus on the warts. Still no reason to wish the West had fallen to Islam. Looking at the state of the two civilizations, I can’t be unhappy that Europe didn’t fall before the onslaught.
Ultralight
10-12-18, 7:50am
Read the Quran and the Hadith. I can assure you that you do not want to live under Sharia.
Williamsmith
10-12-18, 8:35am
I managed to survive all the lies about Christopher Columbus and even drew some nice crayon drawings of Columbus landing amongst the natives in elementary school. It was a neat story even if it was fiction and the three gold plates my grandma had nailed on her living room wall commemorating the “Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria”.....sealed the deal.
The native inhabitants seemed to have gotten a raw deal. My area is rich with the history of the French & Indian War. It seems like the major disease that kill them off was lead poisoning. There is a remnant of them that lives in western New York on a reservation. They were quite content in their native land but a reservoir project seems more important so they took their land, forced them out and flooded the valley and all their burial sites. So they get a little scuffed up sometimes when the government tries to tell them what to do on their reservation. They have been know to shut down interstates, burn tires and create unrest. But it all worked out good for me because I can get gasoline about 60 cents a gallon cheaper on the reservation as well as untaxed goods and I can gamble in their nice casinos.
I know it’s the fashion to focus on the warts. Still no reason to wish the West had fallen to Islam. Looking at the state of the two civilizations, I can’t be unhappy that Europe didn’t fall before the onslaught.
Personally, I wouldn't care to be subject to either, though the Catholic Church has evolved faster, it seems to me, than has Islam under the Imams. Both have been brutal, historically. (I have to thank the Catholics for sponsoring the Inquisition, though, as it forced my SO's ancestors to flee to a country near me...:D:thankyou:)
I would argue that Islam has devolved instead of evolved.
Read the Quran and the Hadith. I can assure you that you do not want to live under Sharia.
Nor do i want to live under the Christian version of it.
Ultralight
10-14-18, 8:51am
I would argue that Islam has devolved instead of evolved.
Finally we agree on something!
Ultralight
10-14-18, 8:53am
Nor do i want to live under the Christian version of it.
You have not read the New Testament and the Quran. Otherwise you'd see the incredible doctrinal differences. And I say this as a Hitch-style atheist who thinks religion poisons everything.
Jesus was a do-gooding desert hippie compared to Mohamed and the texts differ startlingly.
I’m notoffering an endorsement of one or the other. Sinply stating that i wish all religious people would butt out of everyone else’s lives. But that’s not the way most religions work. At least not the ones that are run by successful salesmen who understand how to build a business.
The here’s the problem - Christian nationalists don’t follow the red letters of Jesus in the New Testament. They follow whatever verse from the entire book that supports their agenda. Hence, I fear a move toward a handmaids tale type of world if we ever become officially a Christian nation.
Secularism is awesome,
Ultralight
10-14-18, 10:04am
The here’s the problem - Christian nationalists don’t follow the red letters of Jesus in the New Testament. They follow whatever verse from the entire book that supports their agenda. Hence, I fear a move toward a handmaids tale type of world if we ever become officially a Christian nation.
Go to nations with Sharia. They are like Handmaid's Tale now.
You can point to crazy Christians and say: "You are not really following your good book!"
But when you point to Islamic extremists you cannot say the same. What terrorists do is pretty much condoned or even directed in the Quran and Hadith. That is why Islam needs an "enlightenment."
JaneV2.0
10-14-18, 10:06am
It's the Old Testament that mirrors the Q'uran. Apparently, Muslims neglected to write a sequal.
Jesus had a lot of good ideas--I particularly like his views of money changers and praying out of sight, but I agree completely about secularism.
Ultralight
10-14-18, 10:25am
It's the Old Testament that mirrors the Q'uran. Apparently, Muslims neglected to write a sequal.
You're out of your element here. What you are saying is literally untrue if you read the texts.
It's the Old Testament that mirrors the Q'uran. Apparently, Muslims neglected to write a sequel.
Your chronology could not be more wrong. The Old Testament was written in the 6th to 10th centuries BCE. The Koran was written between 609 and 632 CE.
JaneV2.0
10-14-18, 11:58am
Your chronology could not be more wrong. The Old Testament was written in the 6th to 10th centuries BCE. The Koran was written between 609 and 632 CE.
I should have said they're equally brutal; sorry for the confusion.
Ultralight
10-14-18, 12:05pm
I should have said they're equally brutal.
The brutality of the Old Testament is not really going on anymore.
My point is this - the Bible does support crazy stuff. We are just blind to it cause we grew up with it.
Abraham with a knife at his sons throat cause god said so
Gods army killing men children and non virgins but keeping virgins for themselves cause god said so
Jesus saying cut off your hand if it offends you
Paul saying women can’t talk in church
It’s all there ...
Ultralight
10-14-18, 12:23pm
My point is this - the Bible does support crazy stuff. We are just blind to it cause we grew up with it.
Abraham with a knife at his sons throat cause god said so
Gods army killing men children and non virgins but keeping virgins for themselves cause god said so
Jesus saying cut off your hand if it offends you
Paul saying women can’t talk in church
It’s all there ...
Yeah, you should read the Quran and Hadith.
Myself and other atheists are quite aware that the bible is a nuthouse of craziness. The reason people don't know it is that most Christians don't read their bible. I had met three Christians in my whole life who have read the entire bible all the way through. And they are all atheists now.
The brutality of the Old Testament is not really going on anymore.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-kaoma-uganda-gays-american-ministers-20140323-story.html
Ultralight
10-14-18, 12:30pm
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-kaoma-uganda-gays-american-ministers-20140323-story.html
Dude. This is horrible. But comparatively insignificant. Go to literally any Islamic nation and dance to George Michael's I Want Your Sex. See how long it takes you to get caned or stoned or worse.
The vast majority of Christian nations, including our own, are quite tolerant of gayness. This is because of the enlightenment and the subsequent secular governments that sprang from it.
I’ve read the Koran and many other religious texts.
And I’ve read the whole bible in about 6-8 different versions front to back, and I’m agnostic. So now you know another person who fits that description. 😄
I suppose everybody is entitled to his own demonology, and we could spend a lot of time arguing over historical horrors. There is certainly plenty to choose from.
Personally I don’t see the establishment of some kind of Christian authoritarian theocracy as a particularly plausible threat. Christianity in fact seems to me to be put on the defensive in recent years. Most of the really effective tyrannies, at least since the French Revolution, seem to have been atheistic in practice or ideology.
I’m also of the opinion that the survival and rise of Western Civilization has by and large been a good thing for the world. I’ll grant that Europeans have often abused people who were perfectly capable of abusing themselves, but I think we are probably in a better place now than if the Aztecs or Turks had dominated the last several centuries.
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