It’s Columbus Day, and The New York Times’ way of celebrating it is to publish an op-ed  by a Hispanic anti-Columbus freelance audio journalist who complains about there being a gigantic statue to the explorer in Puerto Rico. After all, she reasons, the island is in “the part of the world that suffered Columbus’s brutality firsthand.”

Columbus’s “brutality,” of course, is not what’s being celebrated or honored by Columbus Day.   In 2019, before the Dawn of The Great Stupid, I re-posted both essays I have authored on Ethics Alarms about Columbus, the first, from 2011, explaining why it was an ethical holiday; the second, from two years later, taking the ethical position that Columbus is a problematical figure to honor. The comments the dual post inspired were diverse and excellent, and none of them endorsed contrarian post #2. 

2019 seems decades away now, with the annus horribilis of 2020 yawning between then and now like, well, the Atlantic Ocean. One bit of the Times op-ed perfectly crystalized why I cannot embrace the anti-Columbus Day movement—-even Massachusetts is considering making it “Indigenous Peoples Day,” meaning the Mayflower is next on the airbrushing list—and it was a CBS story linked to it about all the other Columbus statues that have been toppled lately (while the one on Puerto Rico, where Columbus is mentioned in the national anthem, still stands) “explains”:

After George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25, protests flooded the country and forced America to reckon with its past. Many protesters across the country flocked to local statues, demanding their removal and in some cases taking them down themselves. Almost 60 Confederate monuments have been removed, relocated and renamed since Floyd’s death, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Yeah, THAT makes a lot of sense. A non-racial incident in Minnesota involving an over-dosing habitual criminal trying to resist arrest and ending up dying in the midst of negligent restraint by a bad cop makes people want to cancel an iconic 15th Century explorer. Brilliant. Yet it is also fitting, somehow: the same episode was permitted to launch the Great Stupid and its prevailing ethos that only the negative consequences created by something matter, the somethings including free speech, rules, laws, law enforcement, men, romance, white people, the Founders, literature, “Gone With The Wind,” gestating babies, industry, civilization, and the United States of America, among others. The one really bad line of my anti-Columbus (but not anti-Columbus Day) piece was this: “And who is to say that the world would be better today had pre-Columbian civilizations persisted without European interference?”

Ugh. NOBODY can say the world would be better today if those primitive cultures had not been overwhelmed by a superior one. Well, the can say it, but it would be incredibly stupid. A satirical article linked to a comment in 2019 made the point nicely with its facetious list of ways to “not be a bigot on Indigenous Peoples’ Day.” The list (with explanations; read the piece):

1. Perform human sacrifice
2. Massacre neighboring indigenous peoples
3. Collect scalps of your enemies
4. Enslave other humans
5. Eat people
6. Steal everything
7. Torture your enemies
8. Complain about Europeans doing the same thing you did

The article concludes, “If you don’t do these—at least one of them—you’re a bigot.”

Well played.

Here are the two Columbus articles again. I no longer endorse the second, but it’s worth including for the counterpoint. It’s also worth including this Comment of That Day, though it wasn’t recognized at the time (mea culpa), by Steve-O-in NJ:

I hate to break the news to you, but this isn’t about Christopher Columbus and what he did or didn’t do. This isn’t about the Indians and how they should or shouldn’t have been treated. This is about two things leading to a third thing. First this is about dividing society, not just between the Italian-Americans and the Indians, but between those who choose to celebrate, or even who choose to leave it alone, and those who oppose to appear “woke” or “forward-thinking” or just not to appear racist. Second, it’s about an attack on the West, its history, and its traditions by those who hate it and all it stands for, and can’t wait to try to make this place into the illusory utopia people like Bernie Sanders promise. It’s from both those things that a few folks hope to score political points and generate political capital.

It’s rich to call those who choose to celebrate Italian-American culture and contributions racist. We were treated pretty badly upon arrival, and not really even considered white initially. The biggest lynching ever in the US was of 11 Italian-Americans in New Orleans. It was also a year before we were allowed to join the fight in WW2 because we “passed the test” according to FDR. We might not boast a heavily decorated UNIT from that conflict like the 442nd, but we do boast several highly decorated INDIVIDUALS, like John Basilone, Vito Bertoldo, and Ralph Cheli.

It’s also rich to call the third most influential person (after Christ and Mohammed tied for first and Guttenberg second) in history a villain for making everything that is America possible. Don’t give me that Leif Erickson was first nonsense, he established no lasting link. But while we’re on the topic, if Leif truly was first, doesn’t the guilt transfer to him? Don’t bother answering, the question was rhetorical. And please don’t throw out that pseudohistory about the Welsh Indians and Chinese villages on the West Coast before Columbus. Here’s one you can answer, though: Do you really think that, once it was known there was a whole untouched hemisphere, the rulers of Europe would have written some kind of treaty banning any European from sailing west out of sight of the Pillars of Hercules? Do you think such a treaty would have lasted more than a generation? Do you really think that the world would be a better place had the United States never come to be? Yes or no, please, no equivocating. If the answer is no, then why the fuss? If the answer is yes, why are you still here?

Viva Italia! Viva America! Viva Colombo!

The two posts….

I. Celebrate Columbus Day, Honor Columbus

Today is Columbus Day, not that one would know it to read the typical paper or to watch most newscasts. The Italian explorer’s reputation and legacy have been relentlessly eroded over the years by temporal chauvinists who apply spurious social and historical hindsight to justify unfair criticism of civilization’s heroes. Christopher Columbus deserves the honor this holiday bestowed on him.  He was a visionary and an explorer who, like all transformative figures, possessed the courage and imagination to challenge conventional wisdom and seek new horizons of achievement.

Holding Columbus responsible for the predation of the Spanish and the devastation of native populations that were among the unanticipated consequences of his achievement is the equivalent of blaming Steve Jobs for technology’s elimination of occupations and the fact that our children are fat and have the attention span of mayflies. And of course, anyone who believes that the Stone Age populations of the Americas would have continued to prosper in Avatar bliss without Columbus’s intrusion is ignorant of both human nature and world history.

To celebrate Columbus Day is to extol the virtues of creativity, courage, fortitude, sacrifice, determination, diligence, perseverance, leadership and vision, as well as to acknowledge the debt our nation owes Columbus for its existence. Pronouncing him a villain, as it is now politically correct to do, encourages future generations to fear change, conflict, risk and innovation, all crucial to the American spirit and the advancement of humanity.

Today it is appropriate to reacquaint ourselves with the 19th Century poem that was once standard fare in elementary schools, but is now relegated to the same bin of forgetfulness as “Paul Revere’s Ride,” “Casey at the Bat” and “The Highwayman.” It is “Columbus,” by Joaquin Miller, himself a historical figure who deserves to be remembered, and it was one of my dad’s favorites.

Columbus

By Joaquin Miller (1837-1913)

Behind him lay the gray Azores,    
  Behind the Gates of Hercules;    
Before him not the ghost of shores,    
  Before him only shoreless seas.    

The good mate said: “Now must we pray,           
  For lo! the very stars are gone.    
Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say?”    
  “Why, say, ‘Sail on! sail on! and on!’”    

“My men grow mutinous day by day;    
  My men grow ghastly wan and weak.”           
The stout mate thought of home; a spray    
  Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek.    

“What shall I say, brave Admiral, say,    
  If we sight naught but seas at dawn?”    
“Why, you shall say at break of day,           
  ‘Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!’”    

They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow,    
  Until at last the blanched mate said:    
“Why, now not even God would know    
  Should I and all my men fall dead.           

These very winds forget their way,    
  For God from these dread seas is gone.    
Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say”—    
  He said: “Sail on! sail on! and on!”    

They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate:          
  “This mad sea shows his teeth to-night.    
He curls his lip, he lies in wait,    
  With lifted teeth, as if to bite!    

Brave Admiral, say but one good word:    
  What shall we do when hope is gone?”           
The words leapt like a leaping sword:    
  “Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!”    

Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,    
  And peered through darkness. Ah, that night    
Of all dark nights! And then a speck—          
  A light! A light! A light! A light!    

It grew, a starlit flag unfurled!    
  It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn.    
He gained a world; he gave that world    
  Its grandest lesson:

“On! Sail On!”

Now the later, more cynical post…

II. The Strange, Conflicted, Unethical Holiday We Call Columbus Day

What are we celebrating on Columbus Day, and is it ethical to celebrate it?

When I was a child, I was taught that we were celebrating the life of Cristoforo Columbo, popularly known as Columbus, who was convinced, against the prevailing skeptics of the time, that the Earth was round rather than flat, and in the process of proving his thesis, made the United States of America possible by discovering the New World in 1492. Virtually none of what we were taught about Columbus was true,  so what we thought we were celebrating wasn’t really what we were celebrating. Columbus wasn’t alone in believing the world was round: by 1492, most educated people knew the flat Earth theory was dumb. He blundered into discovering the New World, and by introducing Spain into this rich, virgin and vulnerable territory, he subjected millions of people and generations of them to Spain’s destructive and venal approach to exploration, which was, in simple terms, loot without mercy. The Spanish were like locusts to the Americas; South and Central America are still paying the priced today. Surely we aren’t celebrating Columbus’s complicity in that.

Nor could we be honoring his character. All of history’s heroes have flaws, warts and skeletons in their closets, but few seem as ugly and ethically bankrupt as Columbus. His one defense is that he was a man of his times, but so were the purveyors of the Spanish Inquisition, and we don’t have holidays named after them. Columbus treated the native people he encountered exactly like the nastier invading aliens in science fiction movies treat humans. They are slaves, subjects and nuisances, if not food: at least Columbus didn’t try to eat the Taino people, who he just helped to decimate instead.

Are we celebrating exploration, discovery, and discoverers, perhaps? If so, Columbus would seem to symbolize the worst aspects of the breed. I am reminded of the words spoken by Ian Malcolm, the “chaotician” played by Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park:

“What’s so great about discovery? It’s a violent, penetrative act that scars what it explores. What you call discovery, I call the rape of the natural world.”

Celebrating Columbus Day, it seems to me, is a cultural cheer for consequentialism, like having a holiday honoring the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Yes, in a sense we owe Columbus: as with the asteroid, without him, we might not be here—but we don’t have Asteroid Day for a reason: it would be stupid. Columbus, however, had little more intent to lay the groundwork for the world’s most successful democracy than that asteroid had to pave the way for the human race. Moreover, unlike that asteroid, it seems likely, indeed inevitable, that the rape of the natural world in the Americas was going to happen eventually anyway. It’s a mighty big land mass to remain unknown and unvisited forever, and it is probably that whenever the technologically superior Europeans got here with their dread pandemics, native Americans were not going to fare well or justly. For the same reason, it is grossly unfair to lay what happened to our indigenous people at Columbus’s feet.

And who is to say that the world would be better today had pre-Columbian civilizations persisted without European interference? I can imagine an alternate history where the Taino and the rest all end up in a triumphant Third Reich’s ovens, with no United States to stand in Hitler’s way.

I suppose, then, Columbus Day in 2013 is just a way to show gratitude for the way things worked out, to say that it’s a good thing, on balance, that the United States is here, that we’re grateful for it, and that we recognize Columbus, with all his brutality and blunders, as a representative of all of the random occurrences, events, people and lucky strokes that got us this far. There is no reason any native American should agree, and I have to think if we really worked at it, maybe we could come up with a more appropriate and less conflicting object of our respect.

Happy Asteroid Day?