Does Christopher Columbus still matter?
Is he worth celebrating after 530 years?
We need to sort through history and the bias of what’s written in our day. Older history books may have downplayed the faults/sins of past heroes of Western civilization, but that’s no longer typical.
The more common error in our day is seen with “history” books that misrepresent facts to push an agenda – usually an anti-American ideology. Research the influence “Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States” has on AP History classes/tests in high school classes nationwide; even liberal historians say the book doesn’t qualify as good history. Now we have the – even worse – 1619 Project, influencing Common Core curriculum.
My point is not to write a correction to this propaganda, or even to detail who Columbus really was (Michael Knowles has great stuff out there on Columbus for those who are interested).
But Columbus wasn’t the murdering tyrant he is made out to be. He had faults, but there was much to admire about him as well – like the best people alive today.
He began as an uneducated man without rank, but he worked hard and taught himself to read and learned navigation. He wanted to try new things and explore sailing out to the West – unheard of in his day. He desired to find a new route to the Indies and believed that it could prove vital in spreading Christianity in the East.
After he failed to get Portugal to finance his expedition, he tried for eight years to convince the Monarchs of Spain to get behind his exploration. He finally convinced them and traveled across an ocean using a compass.
Some lessons in this brief sketch I want my boys to learn/emulate are a spirit of adventure, self-education, diligence, hard work, persistence and a desire to use one’s life to further the kingdom of God in the world.
I’d be open to an Indigenous People’s Day on a different day. We ought not hesitate to recognize individuals who’ve changed the world and to emulate the good in them.
We live in a day when men who accomplished great things are having their statues torn down because they didn’t live up to our modern ideals (“presentism”) and men who’ve accomplished nothing but a life of crime are having statues erected in their honor – simply because they are perceived as victims (i.e., George Floyd).
We ought to celebrate all who accomplished great things worth emulating, from minorities like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass to indigenous
people like Pocahontas and Junaluska – and even Italians like Columbus.
Let’s not promote victimhood anymore than it already is in our day of identity politics, where young people are enticed to check as many victim boxes as they can. Let’s promote real historical heroes – of all colors, races, and ethnicities.
Scott Kamps writes a bi-weekly column for The Graham Star. He can be reached via email, thestableguy@frontier.com.