Should Columbus Day be celebrated?

[phk]

Yes, there's no reason to stop celebrating Columbus Day.

The politically correct attack on Columbus Day has made me want to celebrate it even more.

I don't buy into this America-hating left wing drivel that idealizes the Indians and excoriates Europeans without exception.  Follow that to its logical conclusion, and we should all leave, and turn things back over to the Indians.  The truth is no doubt far more complex than either the (a) Columbus was great brigade; or (b) Columbus was a genocidal murderer.

Attacks on Columbus by left-wing liberals are ultimately attacks on America itself.

So we should celebrate the Holocaust as well? I mean we should if were going to celebrate genocide in the name of Christianity.

[opebo]

It should be renamed Genocide Day, and a massive reparation should be paid to the Indians.

[phk]

Well, you know, cultures are made up of people, so blaming the events on cultural acceptance instead of human nature doesn't change much.

As far as Christianity not promoting killing:

Deuteronomy 20:10-17
"When you draw near a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if its answer to you is peace and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labour for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; and when the Lord your God gives it into your hand you shall put all its male to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the cattle, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemy, which the Lord God has given to you. Thus you shall do to all the cities which are far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. In the cities of these people that the Lord your God gives you an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amoriotes, the Canaanites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded."

Deuteronomy 7:2
"and when the Lord your God gives then [the enemies] over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them..."

Numbers 31:7
They warred against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and slew every male.

Numbers 31:17
[Moses said to them] "... Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by lying with him..."

I Samuel 15:1-3
And Samuel said to Saul, "The LORD sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore hearken to the words of the LORD. Thus says the LORD of hosts, `I will punish what Am'alek did to Israel in opposing them on the way, when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and smite Am'alek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.'"

II Kings 2:23-24
He [Elisha] went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, "Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!" And he turned around and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out from the woods and tore forty-two of the boys.

And I can go on and on and on.

[Akno21]

We don't even get the day off.

[angus]

Good idea Carl.  The thread has degraded into a discussion of who "discovered" the americas, the ethnicity of Columubus, and whether it's worth celebrating any of them.  Of course, it was begun on a fairly low note, with a bizarre claim that Columbus was genocidal and despicable, and the implication that one can't honor both Europeans and Indigenous peoples simultaneously.  anyway, you can't say Columbus, the first European to think he sailed around the world to the East Indies, discovered America.  Nor can you say Lief the Lucky, son of Eric the Red discovered America.  Nor is it fair to say that the Minions of Chinese Emperor of Zhu Di, who visited California and Mexico many years before Columbus discovered the continent.  Nor was it the Irish saint who navigated a craft to the Bahamas six hundred years before Lief the Lucky.  No, it was a group of Siberian hunter-gatherers who discovered America some twenty to thirty thousand years ago, as they crossed a land bridge in what is now the bearing straits.  These are the ones whose descendants would hunt to extinction the Mammoth some fifteen thousand years ago.

Ah, but that means there was life in America before these guys came, so they didn't discover America either.

I liked you better when you were jealous and manipulative.  Yeah, so it's Mammoth and Mastodon Day.  Or Parasaurolophus Day.  that doesn't work either, since they all came looking for food.  Let's stick to humans.  Actually you try to play this "Let's name the Day after the ones who 'discovered' America" game, then you can't even call it Clovis Day anymore.  Till the late 90s, the conventional theory was that the so-called Clovis people, whose oldest artifacts, from the Trinity River Valley in Texas and dated to about 13500 years ago, were the first inhabitants of what is now the continental USA.  But a team from Missouri State University led by archaeologist Neal Lepinot has radiocarbon dated many artifacts from a newly excavated site near Stockton, Missouri, to around 14600 years.  So the Clovis people were bested by about a thousand years.  So let's call it Lepinot Day, or The People That Lepinot Talks About In His Seminars Day.  But then someone will come along and find something even older.  So let's just call it Earliest American Peoples--Yet to be discovered--Day.  You can see how unweildy that is.  (and talk about politically correct!)  And downright silly.  I'm okay with Discovery Day too.  But at some point the more syllables you add the harder it becomes.  I will say that Genocide Day just doesn't quite have the fesitive ring to it that Columbus Day or Discovery Day does for me.  I'd vote against that one.  So let's just stick with Columbus Day, for its recognition (already on calendars), the economics (no need for costly changes), and ease (three syllables, one word:  Columbus).  Now, that we agree on a name, let's go back to the original argument over whether it should be "celebrated"  I say yes.  You are all workaholics.  Get over it.  One more little postal holiday won't bring the economy to a halt.  Anyway, it happens just about midsemester, and by that point we all need a monday off.  You people think we're stuck on columbus?  You should go to central america.  I've been to two countries where the currency is called the Colon.  (Colon is spanish for the name that anglophones render Columbus.  Neither is how the italians render it.)    Whatever you call it, any reason to celebrate is good enough for me.  Food, drink, holiday.  What's wrong with that?

[J-Mann]

I hate people who mass murder and enslave indigenous populations.

Your reasoning is fine, just so long as you remember that the people that were on this land (as well as South America) were killing each other en masse long before Columbus arrived.  A lot of leftists who hate on Columbus seem to forget about that, and when reminded of it, they only respond, "well it was part of their culture."  It was part of Columbus' peoples' "culture" to conquer and enslave and pillage.  They did what came naturally to them.

Very few in history are innocent.  The Indian people that inhabited North America before the Europeans arrived had brutal wars with each other and hunted various species of animals to extinction.  Doesn't sound like your typical "at one with nature"-types, does it?

[Storebought]

Well, you know, cultures are made up of people, so blaming the events on cultural acceptance instead of human nature doesn't change much.

As far as Christianity not promoting killing:

Deuteronomy 20:10-17
"When you draw near a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if its answer to you is peace and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labour for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; and when the Lord your God gives it into your hand you shall put all its male to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the cattle, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemy, which the Lord God has given to you. Thus you shall do to all the cities which are far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. In the cities of these people that the Lord your God gives you an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amoriotes, the Canaanites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded."

Deuteronomy 7:2
"and when the Lord your God gives then [the enemies] over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them..."

Numbers 31:7
They warred against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and slew every male.

Numbers 31:17
[Moses said to them] "... Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by lying with him..."

I Samuel 15:1-3
And Samuel said to Saul, "The LORD sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore hearken to the words of the LORD. Thus says the LORD of hosts, `I will punish what Am'alek did to Israel in opposing them on the way, when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and smite Am'alek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.'"

II Kings 2:23-24
He [Elisha] went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, "Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!" And he turned around and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out from the woods and tore forty-two of the boys.

And I can go on and on and on.

Interesting how, among all those verses, not one from Jesus, the Apostles, or Paul, you know, the actual Christians of the Bible

[patrick1]

I hate people who mass murder and enslave indigenous populations.

Your reasoning is fine, just so long as you remember that the people that were on this land (as well as South America) were killing each other en masse long before Columbus arrived.  A lot of leftists who hate on Columbus seem to forget about that, and when reminded of it, they only respond, "well it was part of their culture."  It was part of Columbus' peoples' "culture" to conquer and enslave and pillage.  They did what came naturally to them.

Very few in history are innocent.  The Indian people that inhabited North America before the Europeans arrived had brutal wars with each other and hunted various species of animals to extinction.  Doesn't sound like your typical "at one with nature"-types, does it?

Good points J-Mann.  There always seems to be a tendency to make the victims virtuous. Being steeped in Irish history and culture, I am quite familiar with this situation.  It is a historical transference- you blame all the shortcomings and failures of your own culture on the other or oppresor nation.  Conversely there is another phenomenon among the "oppresor" nations to view the oppressed as mysterious and holders of arcane wisdom.   I am reminded of the South Park cherokee hair tampon episode.    People will buy into the ancient cures and listen to some dreadful "world"music  just because it is different.   

[Giant Saguaro]

Sure, for obvious reasons.

This notion that Columbus was a 15th century Hitler is an absurdity. That (genocide) was not Columbus's intention AT ALL. And history is pretty clear about that. Hitler set out to rid the world of a certain ethnicity. Columbus wasn't even close to that. And I would argue that much of the conflict was stirred up when Columbus wasn't even around. Or, on occasion when he was fending off attacks. Yes, the Spaniards could be argued to have been aggressors, but both sides had aggressors. And Columbus was always outnumbered and in an alien environment.

[angus]

"Ice Age Columbus:  Who Were the First Americans?"

Tonight at 8 and midnight CST. 

Only on The Discovery Channel. 

[dazzleman]

Columbus Day should be celebrated just to piss off politically correct a&$holes.  I never cared about Columbus Day until these people started attacking it.  Now, I go to a Columbus Day parade every year.

[phk]

Columbus Day should be celebrated just to piss off politically correct a&$holes.  I never cared about Columbus Day until these people started attacking it.  Now, I go to a Columbus Day parade every year.

I'll be sure to be there next year.

[dazzleman]

Columbus Day should be celebrated just to piss off politically correct a&$holes.  I never cared about Columbus Day until these people started attacking it.  Now, I go to a Columbus Day parade every year.

I'll be sure to be there next year.

[WMS]

No, Native Americans discovered America and Columbus treated them as badly as any other filthy european of the time. 

Actually Columbus was against the mistreatment of the native population.

Eventually.... meh, whatever, I think it should be given to the Native Americans tho

Fine, we can start with wherever you're living at the moment. Come along now, AIM needs the space.