In Praise of Columbus

by Theodore King 

In Praise of Columbus

For most of my life Columbus Day was a day you couldn't get mail and the banks were closed. I once asked my dad why we have Columbus Day, he said it was an Italian thing. We aren't Italian, we aren't even in the Knights of Columbus. So I was indifferent to Columbus Day.

Four years ago I applied for a job with a pseudo government agency. I was applying for a job for, which I was qualified, and for which my would be employers were desparate. Because this was a pseudo government agency there were many requirements I had to fullfill. I jumped through the hoops. My interview went well with the lady who does the hiring and I was even given the chance to meet some of the people that I would be working with in my new job. Then a fat woman from Human Resources entered the office with some more paperwork for me to sign, this is a pseudo government agency after all. She was dating a form and asked, “What day is it?” I resonded, “It's October 12, Columbus Day.” She looked at me over her reading glasses with a smirk on her face as if I were her next eclair and said, “Don't you mean Indiginous People's Day?”

“No, I mean Columbus Day. Has been Columbus Day for all my life,” I responded. My interview was soon over, I left the office and went home. A week passed and I heard nothing. This seemed odd as they were “desparate” to fill that post. Well, they weren't THAT desparate as it turned out and I did not get that job. I can't prove it, but I think the fat woman from HR held it against me for having the temerity to say the truth, it was Columbus Day!

Christopher Columubs has taken a beating in the past 26 years since the 500^th anniversary of his arrival in 1992. Cities across America, run by liberals, have ditched Columbus Day for “Native American Day” or “Indiginous People's Day.” Two years agp in Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum, who comes from one of the city's wealthy, ruling families as a LaFortune, decided to force Columbus to share his seat with the Indians by renaming the holiday - Columbus/Native American Day. And last year the Republican controlled legislature here did the same thing with the new governor's blessing.

I reached out to the Knights of Columbus at their headquarters in New Haven, Connecticut asking that they take a stand against this slow erasure of their namesake from history. I never heard back from them. I also reached out to the local chapter at Holy Family Cathedral in Tulsa. They don't care and apparently neither does their home office in New Haven. The Knights of Columbus do a lot of good work and are generally a good bunch of guys, but on this pivitol front in the culture war they are USELESS. Glad I'm not a member. They're probably glad they don't have me either.

Christopher Columbus was probably not the first person to discover the new world, but he was the first person to take back news to a European power (Spain) that he had found new real estate. It is believed Ireland's Saint Brendan in the sixth century made the first discovery. In 1976 and 77 a group of explorers proved that Brendan may have made it to Iceland from Ireland and then on to Nova Scotia, Canada. They used a replica of the leather bound sail boat used by St. Brendan and his monks in the sixth century. This proves an old line about the Irish. God gave them drink to slow them down so they wouldn't conquer the world. The Irish are a clever lot. The Vikings likely discovered America after the Irish had beat them to it.

Three years ago, on Columbus Day, a local radio talk show host in Tulsa had an interview with a local writer about a recent news story unrelated to Columbus Day. At the end of the interview the host asked his guest, who is very liberal, if he was celebrating Columbus Day or Native American Day. The writer predictably responded, “As for me and my house, it's Native American Day.” It was appropriate for this liberal writer to paraphrase the Book of Joshua, he is also Jewish. Because Christopher Columbus arrived in the new world in 1492 and successfully brough back to the old world of Europe news of his real estate discovery, the ancestors of that writer were able to leave Europe and find safety in the new world. His immediate family was able to avoid numerous pogroms against his people and the final solution of the Third Reich. This historical perspective has likely elluded that writer but he's a fool anyway.

This leads to a broader point, because of Columbus millions from around the world were able to make a new life here in the Americas. Our ancestors were able to make a fresh start in a new land and avoid the horrors of poverty and persecution in the old. My own ancestors in Ireland had the option of coming to America after the British government allowed the systematic starvation of the Irish people when the potato crops failed in the 1840s. Today, the ignorantly educated talk of “white supremacy, patricary” and “white privelage.” Columbus is to those people the devil. And yet many of these ignorantly, educated are whites who come from the safety and security of America that their forefathers established. Self-loathing is a psycological disorder and should be recognized as such.

What about the American Indians? How did they fare after the arrival of the white man? Not well, this is a fact of history and not something to be proud. This clash of civilizations was going to happen at some point. Whether anyone wants to admidt it or not, Europeans came from an advanced civilization and they were going to prevail because of their use of technology. The other factor was the disunity between native tribes. In other words, divide and conquer. With this conquest came a new Christian civilization. When Spain's Hernan Cortes arrived in Mexico some 27 years after Columbus' discovery, he found a well developed civilization that practiced human sacrifice on a daily basis. A practice that he and his men, known as Conquistadors, put to an end.

The vilification of Columbus has a sinister motive. He was the man who made European immigration to the new world possible; discredit him and you can discredit all white people living in the Americas. Make them out to be interlopers. Frequently, we read or hear commentators disparagingly refer to "white men" and "old white guys" as if some sort of cancer. Desparaging comments that would not be allowed for any other ethnic group.

There is also the agenda by cultural Marxists to discredit the American founding. Recently, at my father's alma mater Notre Dame a tapestry of Christopher Columbus was covered up because the school administration decided he had to be hidden from history. Take one string on a tapestry and pull on it the rest will come apart. At Tufts Universtiy in Massachusetts there is a movement underway to remove a statue to Thomas Jefferson because he owned slaves.  The real reason for wanting him removed was his work creating the Consttitution of the United States.  Cultural Marxists are working within our institutions to undermine our nation. Marxism will never succeed in this country as long as we have our Constitution. Get rid of that and you've created a void, a void to be filled by evil men and women.

Cultural Marxists operating in our universities and in institutions are a greater long-term threat to our way of life than Al Queda or members of The Islamic State. Their tactics are different, but their goal is the same, destroy America.

In his landmark 1969 documentary on western art titled Civilization Lord Kenneth Clark ended his 13 part series with a warning: "It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilization. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and dissolution just as effectively as by bombs."

Christopher Columbus is a part of our heritage and we must honor him. As for his detractors it is important to note that history is almost never prestine because it deals with complex beings called humans. The world is a better place because Columbus made his succesful voyage.