Well Said

Columbus was Awesome

"Let's be honest, few would do what he did. Oh, and the indigenous peoples were guilty of the same stuff."

[---]

"Yes, it’s in vogue to forsake our Western heritage, to see dead, white men as evil barbarians. But let’s be honest, the reason they’ve been celebrated is because what they did, despite their sins, was incredible. Columbus is certainly one of those men.

In an age when many teenage Americans are too terrified to even state their opinion in a high school class for fear of getting a bad grade and not getting into college, Columbus was already sailing the ocean blue, with reports that he went as far as the coast of Guinea in West Africa – that’s several thousand nautical miles from his home port!"

[---]

"Now, put yourself into the expedition. In looking back, modern man seems tempted to harshly judge every sin of a man whom the current culture has chosen to be against, while failing to judge the whole man and what he accomplished. How many today would have the courage of not just Columbus, but of the other 120 men aboard those little ships (at most, 60 feet long) to sail into the unknown, likely to fail and even to die?"

[---]

"Without a doubt, Columbus did some horrible things, including sending natives back to Spain as slaves who ironically were not treated as such initially. Should he be celebrated for some of his later deeds? Probably not. And so the complexities of history and the imperfections of men reveal themselves to us. But that is also the case of the native populations."

[---]

"Today, any number of classrooms and cities celebrate “Indigenous People’s Day” or some such thing as a way to repent of Columbus’ and the West’s sins of conquest. And yet, when we look at the historical record of indigenous peoples, they were no less blood thirsty (often more so) than the Europeans. Indeed, they conquered and enslaved each other with great frequency."