California Conservative

Or did you forget?

In the reign of political correctness, the day is all but forgotten.

Usually modifying their homepage banner art to acknowledge a holiday, neither Yahoo! nor Google are recognizing this occasion. Why?

The Ayn Rand Institute’s Michael Berliner explains:

Columbus day approaches, but to the “politically correct” this is no cause for celebration. On the contrary, they view the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492 as an occasion to be mourned. They have mourned, they have attacked, and they have intimidated schools across the country into replacing Columbus Day celebrations with “ethnic diversity” days.

The politically correct view is that Columbus did not discover America, because people had lived here for thousands of years. Worse yet, it’s claimed, the main legacy of Columbus is death and destruction. Columbus is routinely vilified as a symbol of slavery and genocide, and the celebration of his arrival likened to a celebration of Hitler and the Holocaust. The attacks on Columbus are ominous, because the actual target is Western civilization.

Did Columbus “discover” America? Yes—in every important respect. This does not mean that no human eye had been cast on America before Columbus arrived. It does mean that Columbus brought America to the attention of the civilized world, i.e., to the growing, scientific civilizations of Western Europe. The result, ultimately, was the United States of America. It was Columbus’ discovery for Western Europe that led to the influx of ideas and people on which this nation was founded—and on which it still rests. The opening of America brought the ideas and achievements of Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and the thousands of thinkers, writers, and inventors who followed.

The full article here.

Berliner encourages us to “Celebrate Western Civilization, Not Multiculturalism.”

Tell that to liberal educators. Or the federal employees who get the day off.

In honor of the day, read about Christopher Columbus

This entry was posted on Monday, October 10th, 2005 at 10:03 am and is filed under Announcements, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.