Your thoughts on this? ("Should we really still be calling it ‪'Columbus Day?'‬")

[Vandalshandle]

I always thought that Chris was kind of dense, considering that, until his dying day, he thought that he had been sailing in Chinese waters, the land of exotic silk and spices, even though he never saw anyone there who was beyond the stone age, nor any silk or spices.

 

[ShootSpeeders]

Columbus got lost and put in to land he stumbled across, thought it was India so called the owners of the land "Indians".

It was stupid to call an American holiday "Columbus Day" and its stupid to give part of the country a paid day off to celebrate some fool who didn't even use a sextant correctly.

If a racist pervert who nearly set a record for lowest GRE score can have his own day, why not ole chris? THINK

 

[ShootSpeeders]

Just wait now. The moonbats will be attacking Christmas soon.

Xmas is just a racket for fleecing the public. You spend hundreds of $ buying crap nobody wants for people you don't even like. THINK

 

[DigitalDrifter]

Lol !!!

Another self-loathing thread !!!

 

[Little-Acorn]

Well, Columbus opened up a "New World" to Europeans who were running out of options in the old one, eventually enabling the formation of the first country whose purpose was to let ordinary people do what they want and sink or swim by their own efforts. A country that rose in record time from a colonial backwater to the most prosperous, safest, and freest one the world had ever seen... and DESPITE the numerous mistakes and atrocities its people committed (slavery, Indian wars, racism etc.). And even despite the Vikings finding the place in the 1100's, and then abandoning it and forgetting about it.

We should call that day something. And "Independence Day" was already taken. So why not name it after the guy who first started the process?

Don't bother listening to the people who can only see the mistakes while ignoring the massive prosperity and freedom, and the proof that people operating with minimal government (as it mostly was till the late 1930s) could achieve far more good than people oppressed under Big Government.

 

[NoNukes]

The is conservative revisionist history.

You don't know history. Disease killed off most of those who died, not "genocide". And don't start with the small pox blankets.

My mother was an Indian. I grew up hearing the truth from Indians, not Whites.

Yeah, she was 300 years old. They were a stone age people with no written language. She only knows what she was told.

Very stupid post. And tell me, were you born with knowledge, or were you told.

Very stupid response. You equate oral tradition with peer reviewed writings.
LOL.

Nice deflection.

 

[NoNukes]

It is leftist propaganda. There was no genocide.

The is conservative revisionist history.

You don't know history. Disease killed off most of those who died, not "genocide". And don't start with the small pox blankets.

My mother was an Indian. I grew up hearing the truth from Indians, not Whites.

No, you grew up hearing their biased accounts. How does such a simple fact escape you?

History is biased. the victors get to write it, but there are two sides to every story. You are obviously easily subjected to propaganda.

 

[Ravi]

Christopher Columbus was awful but this other guy was not - The Oatmeal

That was pretty good. Columbus was basically a plunderer for a dictatorial Spain. He plundered lives and gold for his big government overlords.

Maybe we should find someone else to honor.

 

[frigidweirdo]

No, Columbus caused the deaths of lots of people directly, many more indirectly. US history should not be that he discovered the Americas, he wasn't the first person there and he wasn't even the first European there.

They should perhaps say he led the way towards the colonization of the Americas though, and killed loads.

It's similar to say, Thanksgiving. Yeah, let's thank the Native Americans and pretend we didn't nearly wipe them out in gratitude for saving us.

 

[frigidweirdo]

If not for Columbus, the indians would still be living in teepees and living as hunter-gatherers. They should thank their lucky stars that he showed up.

Similar argument that the Chinese use for building horrible concrete buildings and taking over places like XinJiang and Tibet.

Who needs culture when you have concrete and sameness?

 

[Meathead]

No, Columbus caused the deaths of lots of people directly, many more indirectly. US history should not be that he discovered the Americas, he wasn't the first person there and he wasn't even the first European there.

They should perhaps say he led the way towards the colonization of the Americas though, and killed loads.

It's similar to say, Thanksgiving. Yeah, let's thank the Native Americans and pretend we didn't nearly wipe them out in gratitude for saving us.

Excessive guilt is a familiar condition in psychological circles. It is classified as an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Read more:

Suffolk Cognitive-Behaviour

and get help.

 

[Kondor3]

Columbus discovered a country!



That's laugh-out-loud funny.

True.

The old boy discovered an unexpected hemisphere - a New World - unknown to anyone in the Old World (in any of Europe, Africa or Asia).

As to the Revisionists and Latter-Day Apologists and Native-Firsters Too Late crowd who bemoan the 'discovery', well...

Those not of Indian (Native American) ancestry can always donate their land and goods back to the Natives, and leave the hemisphere, or commit hari kari as penance.

Most folks (myself included) feel no such compulsions, and have a good laugh at those who do, at their expense.

Hell, the scattered, neolithic and nomadic primitives already here weren't doing much with the place anyway, and were still centuries (millennia?) away from being able to compete or hold their own with newcomers who were light years ahead of them in literacy and science and mechanical engineering and trade and culture and the like.

Darwinian 'survival of the fittest'.

Nature de-selected them.

It's a 'done thing'... long-since over... and it worked out for the best, for everybody but the handful of Natives, anyway - and, at this distance in time, there's absolutely no point in putting on the hair shirt and sprinkling earth over our heads and flagellating ourselves for things that happened hundreds of years ago.

Ain't gonna go there. Neither are most other sane people. We (America, at large) did what we could to compensate a bit after the fact, and that's about as good as it's going to get. Enough already.

When it comes to other explorer(s) who might have landed in the Western Hemisphere prior to Columbus...

Journeying to a 'new land' but failing to document or share the knowledge nor to properly exploit the discovery (as reportedly happened with the VIkings, or, more incredulously, with the Chinese) is a zero sum game which, in the long run, doesn't count for much, in practical terms.

Journeying to a 'new land' and documenting the 'find' and sharing the knowledge - and, yes, even exploiting the 'find' - is what signifies - what leaves a lasting impression.

So - yes - celebrate Columbus Day - as the day of Old World landfall in the New World - under circumstances in which the knowledge would be documented and eventually shared with the rest of the Old World.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

'Your thoughts on this? ("Should we really still be calling it ‪'Columbus Day?'‬")'

The real question is why are some on the right seeking to contrive this non-issue into a 'controversy.'

The question is of course rhetorical.

 

[frigidweirdo]

Excessive guilt is a familiar condition in psychological circles. It is classified as an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Read more:

Suffolk Cognitive-Behaviour

and get help.

You're basically trying to justify this kind of behavior then?

Learn from the mistakes of the past is generally a great way to proceed.

But then people like Bush don't, and what happens? Iraq? ISIS?

 

[Kondor3]

'Your thoughts on this? ("Should we really still be calling it ‪'Columbus Day?'‬")'

The real question is why are some on the right seeking to contrive this non-issue into a 'controversy.'

The question is of course rhetorical.

Hmmmmm... the OP certainly strikes me as leaning a wee bit more towards the Left, rather than the Right.

 

[frigidweirdo]

'Your thoughts on this? ("Should we really still be calling it ‪'Columbus Day?'‬")'

The real question is why are some on the right seeking to contrive this non-issue into a 'controversy.'

The question is of course rhetorical.

This is actually important. Should people be celebrating things that do not fit with the modern way of seeing things?

Do we teach children, hey if someone helps you, then afterwards you can do what you like to them? Or, hey, killing is great? etc etc?

Or do you teach them virtues that real are virtuous? Like empathy and kindness?

 

[Meathead]

Excessive guilt is a familiar condition in psychological circles. It is classified as an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Read more:

Suffolk Cognitive-Behaviour

and get help.

You're basically trying to justify this kind of behavior then?

Learn from the mistakes of the past is generally a great way to proceed.

But then people like Bush don't, and what happens? Iraq? ISIS?

I have no compulsion to justify anything which was not of my doing. I simply find those that do tiresome and whiny.

 

[frigidweirdo]

The old boy discovered an unexpected hemisphere - a New World - unknown to anyone in the Old World (in any of Europe, Africa or Asia).

Except the Basques were there and had been there, by estimates, quite a while already.

History and cultural relations - Basques

"Basques, as Europe's earliest and most efficient whalers, may have entered North America prior to the voyages of Columbus. There is documentation of Basque whaling and codfishing activity along the Labrador coast by the early sixteenth century and evidence of Basque loan words in some of the Atlantic coastal Canadian Native American languages. Canadian archivists and archaeologists have discovered a sixteenth-century Basque whaling station (used seasonally) and sunken whaling ship at Red Bay, Labrador. Place names such as Port-aux-Basques, Placentia, and Biscay Bay also testify to a Basque presence in Canadian coastal waters."

Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

Also there are claims of the Norse being there before Columbus, also some Henry or other from the Orkney Islands.

 

[frigidweirdo]

I have no compulsion to justify anything which was not of my doing. I simply find those that do tiresome and whiny.

Ie, ignore anything that's a little too inconvenient.

I bet you'll big up a lot of things.

Do you ignore the trail of tears by any chance?

Surely, a person should be able to accept their country for the good and the bad, and want the future to be more good than bad.

I mean, when it is people trying to justify things in the last decade which are as bad as what happened 300 years ago, you know you haven't learnt a damn thing from history.

 

[Kondor3]

...Except the Basques were there and had been there, by estimates, quite a while already...

If it wasn't documented and prove-able and if the knowledge wasn't shared, then it's as if it never happened, and doesn't count for much.

That's why we call it Columbus Day, and not Basque Whaling Vessel Landfall Day.