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To those who are so enamored of Columbus Day, what did you actually do today to honor Columbus?
I mentioned this in a previous post.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mkpunk
It isn't celebrated in Arizona but technically it is a federal holiday. I'm torn on the idea. It is both a good and bad thing that the New World was discovered. The Indians died off and for that I am broken hearted as part-native but I think it also leads us to America's discovery and the age of exploration. I say call the day both and let people decide.
Quote:
Originally Posted by arjay57
I agree, though I am okay with the rest of us taking off.
How about changing the name to something like Discovery day? That is more neutral and it recognizes that people on both sides of the Atlantic discovered one another.
For those who aren't happy unless the are outraged at something.
Personally I like it because the drive to work is much more pleasant for me when schools are off.
I do think it's a bit silly to even pretend we are celebrating in order to honor someone though. It's just another day off for schools and civil servants.
How about changing the name to something like Discovery day? That is more neutral and it recognizes that people on both sides of the Atlantic discovered one another.
I could live with "Discovery Day." But calling it "Indigenous Persons Day" is nothing but PC pandering. If Columbus doesn't deserve a holiday, why should the aggregate mass of American Indians deserve one? Besides, arguing about what happened under the banner of Columbus and those who followed will get us nowhere. What's done is done, and there's no going back. And while I don't like what happened to the original inhabitants, the outcome of our sometimes-sordid history was the creation of the United States of America -- the greatest man-made force for good ever known by humankind.
I could live with "Discovery Day." But calling it "Indigenous Persons Day" is nothing but PC pandering. If Columbus doesn't deserve a holiday, why should the aggregate mass of American Indians deserve one? Besides, arguing about what happened under the banner of Columbus and those who followed will get us nowhere. What's done is done, and there's no going back. And while I don't like what happened to the original inhabitants, the outcome of our sometimes-sordid history was the creation of the United States of America -- the greatest man-made force for good ever known by humankind.
How about "New World Day" or "Western Hemisphere Day"?
Columbus was a hero much like astronauts were heroes in the 1960s, he sailed the great Unknown and survived.
I'm not going to hate on a man who was a product of his time (1492) and hold him to 2015 P.C. moralilty standards. 100 years from now the future will look back at us and sneer at our incivility and lack of humanity and how we enthusiastically embrace anti-intellectualism.
The second Monday in October marks Columbus Day — a federal holiday since 1937 — when Christopher Columbus first stepped ashore in the Western hemisphere.
Sadly, in recent years it has become fashionable to trash the great "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" as one of history's main villains.
Columbus Day, observed as the actual date of the great achievement of Columbus — October 12, 1492 — until President Richard Nixon designated the second Monday of October as the federal holiday (so federal workers could have a long weekend), is now what many celebrate as "Indigenous People's Day." Not surprisingly, the radical citadel of Berkeley, California, led the way in 1992 in downgrading the great explorer by changing the name of his day.
Katy Schumaker, a classics and letters professor at the University of Oklahoma, repeated the mantra that has become the left-wing template in recent years:
There are plenty of other people who came and "found" the Americas before Columbus did. I think that even if Columbus isn't necessarily important as the person to discover the new world, his voyage, and then further, Spanish and Portuguese settlements, set up a chain reaction that made the Americas what they are today. Things like slavery, the decimation of native populations, all of those things were initiated by that first contact.
This sums up the smug academic attitude about Columbus found on most college campuses: (1) He did not accomplish anything of any importance; and (2) to whatever extent he did accomplish anything, it was something repugnant to all right-thinking people, as he was somehow responsible for the slavery of millions of black Africans and the deaths of millions of indigenous peoples.
I think you need to do some serious reading in American history. Maybe you slept through the chapter in your social studies text on Manifest Destiny and the Mexican War. Maybe you think that the Spanish American War really was only to help Cuba get its freedom form Spain and that the US sending marines to Nicaraugua was a humanitarian mission.
I had written: "My opinion is that, generally speaking, almost everyone BUT the people of the Native American tribes (exterminated or not) are generally better off then they would have been if their ancestors had not come here, even if they were forced to come here, as in the case of slaves.
"What the whites did to the Native Americans and to the Africans they forced to come here as slaves was extremely shameful, despite all the excuses I hear, especially in the case of Native American "Indians". However, although I do think that the majority of U.S. blacks have it better than their relatives who still live in Africa, from everything I have read, I do not think the majority of Native American "Indians" are happier now then they would have been if the whites had never invaded their lands.
"(And, speaking personally, I wish that my English, Scottish, French, and Swiss ancestors who immigrated to the U.S. had not done so. This is due to what the U.S. has become in the past 70 years regarding their involvement in foreign wars due to greed and the "need" of those in power to bend the rest of the world to their will.)"
What does your comment have to do with my post?
Yes, I do know about Manifest Destiny. The concept of that is what is so shameful to me, but then I dislike bullying racists of any kind. I also dislike the imperialism that the U.S. has demonstrated ever since Theodore Roosevelt, and the conquering of what was to be the continental U.S. that started hundreds of years before then. And I also understand that the stronger overpowering the weaker has been common to, I think, to almost all groups of people for thousands and thousands of years (the Amish and the Quakers being two of possibly many other exceptions).
Please write slowly using words of two syllables so that I will be sure to understand. Thank you
Last edited by katharsis; 10-13-2015 at 12:13 PM..
How about "New World Day" or "Western Hemisphere Day"?
Not quite the same, IMO. At least "Discovery Day" acknowledges that something important, involving discovery, happened on October 12, 1492. Whether one is in favor of this discovery or opposed to it, no one can doubt its importance. "New World Day" does at least hint at it, but "Western Hemisphere Day" doesn't tell us anything about what it is that we are commemorating.
Or, we could just leave it "Columbus Day."
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Columbus should and will be regarded as one of the worst of all the butchers that Europe foisted on the New World peoples.