CELEBRATING COLUMBUS AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION

Today, October 12, is the 514^th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' landing on Guanahani (now known as San Salvador or Watlings) island in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492.

Unfortunately, Columbus Day is for most Americans just an excuse for a three-day weekend, which is why it fell on Monday, October 9.  What it should be is a commemoration and celebration of  Western Civilization – which is why the Left hates Columbus and his holiday.

Fortunately, North Korea's botched nuclear bomb explosion shooed the Columbus Day protestors off the newspaper pages and television screens. 

Thankfully ignored was the usual spectacle of American Indians using the holiday to denounce the White Man and his genocidal war-mongering culture-destroying earth-murdering imperialism, blah blah blah – with White Liberals joining in, masochistically condemning their own civilization.

But they will be at it again next year, so let us suggest to them now that they abandon every vestige of the civilization they hate as so evil – for else they are bottomless hypocrites.

Not just every material benefit – electricity, the wheel, and all post-Stone Age inventions. Every psychological vestige as well – starting with the very concept of American Indian or Native American or any other collective term.

The concept of American Indian is a modern one, not possessed by any Amerindians until they learned it from Europeans. An Indian's pre-Columbian identity was that of his or her membership in a particular tribe such as the Kiowa or Lakota.

This is why there were no Indians in America when Columbus discovered it. There were Chippewa and Iroquois and Mohawk and Miwok and Powhatten and hundreds if not thousands of others – but there were no Indians, because none of them possessed any sort of pan-tribal notion of common humanity and cultural identity.

These tribes were in a state of constant warfare with each other. Alliances were ephemeral and temporary. The fantastic level of violence perpetrated by pre-Columbian Amerindian tribes upon each other is documented by Lawrence Keeley in War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage.

In this state of perpetual war, victorious tribes seized control over the land of a defeated one. The Sioux, for example, kicked out the native inhabitants of the Plains, moving there after they themselves were kicked out of Canada by other tribes. Of course, the Sioux culture of the Great Plains with the eagle feather headdresses, hunting buffalo on galloping horses, was made possible by the introduction of horses by Europeans in the first place.

So another thing the Columbus-haters would have to give up on their reservations would be horses — in addition to cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles and any other form of transportation except their feet.

That larger and stronger tribes from Europe conquered all Amerindian tribes and took most of their land is in no way essentially different from their own pre-Columbian history.

For all those guilt-ridden liberals who think we should give it back – ask them to what tribe are they donating their home and other property?

Ask them if they are suggesting Amerindians relinquish all products of European psychological imperialism, Eurocentric concepts such as the earth goes around the sun, reading, writing, mathematics, physics and chemistry, and all other educational oppressions?

You can have a lot of fun posing such questions to liberal lovers of the Stone Age – and telling them to act as they preach.

So this evening  – most appropriately over a glass or two of chianti, montepulciano or other Italian red of your choice – give thanks to the Admiral of the Sea, one of the great heroes of history, Christopher Columbus, and the blessings of Western Civilization that his discovery bestowed upon America.