I don't get the taking down Columbus statues thing. In my mind there's a clear difference between individuals who rebelled and fought against the government of the United States to preserve the institution of slavery and an individual who engaged in slavery as part of a voyage which changed the cause of history, for both good and ill.
A statue of Jefferson Davis is commemorating the Confederacy; a statue of Columbus is commemorating the European discovery and colonisation of the Americas. I don't think the latter is as objectionable as the former, and I don't see how a country birthed by European colonisation like the United States could in good faith apologise for itself.
You don't see why people don't want to commemorate this and events like it?
Colonialism was objectively pretty damn awful. Sure, it gave us the world we have today, and I certainly don't think we should forget about it. But putting up statues of the figures responsible for genocide, slavery, and untold oppressions doesn't seem right.This is a serious question-- even in the gentlest possible trans-Atlantic contact scenario, how could these epidemics been avoided? Can people be really tasked with "moral responsibility" for processes which they did not understand and could not control? The only possible way to avoid this would've been to somehow quarantine the Americans, without knowing why, until the 19th century.
