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CELEBRATING COLUMBUS AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Thursday, 12 October 2006 |
Today, October 12, is the 514th 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.
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