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Columbus was a pretty loathsome person

Anti-Columbus protesters in downtown Boston

Pilotblock watched a march through Downtown Crossing today by protesters who want to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day.

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Columbus was an extraordinary mariner. He sailed back and forth to America four times. It's a huge exaggeration to lay everything that came after upon his ability as an administrator. He did not have great results at the time, but was not that different from anybody else who had to run a European colony in the Americas.

Those who succeeded in that period were men who could take and hold land. Since we owe everything we have to them it seems historically myopic to start throwing around moral judgements. Both Imperial Spain and the societies they encountered in the Americas were capable of horrible cruelty.

True progress in consciousness would incorporate all earlier forms of consciousness, and that would mean a way to deal with Columbus and his evils as indelible parts of our present, which we claim is so much better.

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Extraordinary mariner? Columbus and all his crew would have died a horrible death at sea if the "new world" hadn't been directly in his idiot way. The popular myth is that Columbus thought the earth was round when everyone thought it was flat. In actuality, Columbus thought the earth had a smaller circumference than everyone else thought, leading him to terribly misjudge the distance. He thought this due to basic math and geographical errors. No ship of the era could have made the voyage westward to India, not by a longshot.

And we only revere him in the US, where Columbus never set foot, because we were still too pissy about England to give John Cabot (aka Giovanni Caboto) any due.

To my fellow Italian-Americans: Amerigo Vespucci is waiting quietly in the corner, waiting for you to notice him.

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Whom TWO CONTINENTS are named after? Never heard of him!

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And Hitler made the trains run on time, so effing what??

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I believe you're thinking of Mussolini. German trains always ran on time.

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I think that was Mussolini

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Every single person marching has spent their entire life benefiting from the fruits of European colonization of America. While in that America, they are perfectly free to try to bite the very hand that fed them, I will not take them seriously.

Again, my favorite question: what's the limiting principle?

If Columbus is now morally repugnant and we have to take down the statues and rename parks and streets and holidays, should we demand the Europeans take down the monuments to their past kings who did much worse, and to their own people? Do we demand that Roman (hehe) temples and statues and bridges and aquaducts be torn down because the emperors that commission them and stamped their names on them presided over wars of conquest and genocide and enslavement?

Where does it end? If the answer is 'nowhere' (like it is here), then there's no intellectual figleaf you can put over it. It's just an angry mob that's found something new (or 500 years old) to be riled up about.

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"Every single person marching has spent their entire life benefiting from the fruits of European colonization of America. While in that America, they are perfectly free to try to bite the very hand that fed them, I will not take them seriously."

Tell that to the Taino. Oh you can't, because they're all dead.

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I guess they weren't marching

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There is none.
Antifa has declared war, so war it is. https://revolutionaryabolition.org/2017/09/21/deface-columbus-day.html is the website they are using for their views.

"The battles lines have been drawn and white supremacists are on notice. White nationalist statues are crumbling all over the US as our collective revolutionary power is growing. As the monuments of white supremacist society fall we must continue to make it clear that their reign of terror is coming to an end."

There are no limiting principles. If you like Columbus, you're a white supremacist. If you think the statue in the North End should stay up, you condone the 'reign of terror' of the white racists.
If you think maybe Abraham Lincoln is safe, well, just visit UW-Madison... https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/37583/

It is indeed all spinning out of control, yet has an oddly familiar ring to it...

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1. You don't know anything about the people marching. To just assume that everybody on earth benefited from European colonization is the kind egocentric dishonesty that this march would like to change.

2. "limiting principle" is just another "Tu Quoque." What aboutism is the refuge of the factless.

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1. You don't know anything about the people marching. To just assume that everybody on earth benefited from European colonization is the kind egocentric dishonesty that this march would like to change.

I see they're mostly white-ish folks who look like they'd be from around here and have signs in English. The rest I infer from context. I said nothing about 'everybody on Earth,' just about people currently residing in the Americas. But sure, I'll extend my claim to that too. America in particular has done more good on the whole than bad. By a big margin.

2. "limiting principle" is just another "Tu Quoque." What aboutism is the refuge of the factless.

It's neither. It's a serious question about the intellectual underpinnings of this protest. My assertion is it has none. My implication is that movements without intellectual foundation are worth ignoring. Because in this country, we like to aspire to make decisions on merit rather than on emotion.

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You admit that you decided that you decided you know everything about a person by looking at them. You deny the uniqueness of the cascade of events after Columbus's arrival, not the first European to land in the americas. You can't disqualify their anger because this holiday is not the only thing wrong in history.

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And everybody just goes to work?

This revisionist history is getting old. You can't judge people from decades and centuries ago by today's standards and few people save maybe Hitler and Caligula were pure evil.

Ps -There, i mentioned Hitler. Thus discussion over.

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I mean, if we're going to be pedantic, what Godwin said was that the longer an online discussion goes on, the greater the odds somebody will mention Hitler. He didn't say that means the discussion is over. Sooo ...

Eight reasons to hate Columbus Day

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Thought I had discovered that all arguments were round with no beginning or end as long as you mention Hitler.

Again, the whole Columbus thing is nonsense. Day after tomorriw I'm going to work and claiming that it's November 9th.

And I'm invoking Stevil's law.

All arguments officially end when you mention Caligula and Columbus in the same thread. After all, they're both Italians. Oh, wait a minute... :-)

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Bashing Columbus Day is a direct attack on Italian Americans and it is a sad day when a popular blog abuses passes around alarmist propaganda designed to discriminate. Just like the Godfather and Tony Soprano, American populism has allowed this to happen. Columbus Day began because of the lynchings in New Orleans and those discriminatory views continue to pervade our society today.

Did the indigenous peoples not rape their women in 1492? Did they not have slaves? Did they not behead and wipe out rival tribes? What do you really know about that period besides joining a populist bandwagon using today's standards. The Europeans had better weapons but do not confuse that with intent of either Columbus or the Indians.

http://www.truthaboutcolumbus.com/
"Neither a perfect man, nor the historic villain that recent critics have sought to make him, Christopher Columbus was actually a man ahead of his time whose vision and discovery changed the course of world history by connecting the peoples of the world for the first time."

The KKK tried to ban Columbus Day too. That's the company you're in.

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Why do you think the KKK tried to ban Columbus Day?

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The KKK opposed Columbus because they saw him as representing Catholicism. They were seen disrupting many Columbus Day celebrations by trying to get statues removed, disrupted Columbus Day celebrations (sound familiar?).

Most of the negative 'fake news' regarding Columbus comes from English and Scandinavians documents (not indigenous people) who were war rivals with Spain and wanted to discredit his claim of territory for Spanish conquest.

Indigenous People's Day sounds like a great idea. Why does it have to come at the expense by tearing down the pride of Italian Americans? The desecration of Indians was much worse when English and French colonization came to America in later centuries.

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People march against Columbus because Scandinavia wanted to discredit the Spanish because dibs?

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Enrico Fermi? Frank Sinatra? Fiorello La Guardia? Lawrence Ferlinghetti?

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"Bashing Columbus Day is a direct attack on Italian Americans"

The thing that has always bugged me/made me laugh, as someone who is also by birth an "Italian-American", is how "Italian-Americans" glommed on to Columbus. Don't they know history? Columbus was not wanted in Italy and sailed under the auspices of Spain and the Spanish flag. Granted, some Latinos take pride in Columbus, but it is mostly Italian-Americans by a wide margin. Something doesn't compute.

Incidentally, there is evidence that Columbus was in fact not even a poor Italian from Genoa, but an educated Greek from a noble family. But that's a different thread for another time.

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when David Ortiz or Pedro Martinez played in Fenway your would see Dominican Flags all over the place. Its almost as if folks will cheer on their brethren no matter what team/country they play for.....weird.

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How many European women were with Columbus in 1492 that indigenous people were able to rape? That seems odd.

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about being an Italian American. Because you don't speak for me.

Proud Italian Americans work for a living. We don't need excessive holidays. The Romans had too many holidays on their calendar. Remember how that worked out?

As for the rest of your post, I'd like to respond to it. But it made so little sense to me that I can't.

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Just putting history in perspective, given that Columbus attacked Native Americans first.

Get over it - its a holiday that most of the US never celebrated anyway. I never got off school for it. Where I am right now, it isn't a holiday except for the Post Office. The kids in the area will be going to school tomorrow. That's just how little it matters to most of the country.

Stick to your festivals if you want ethnic pride. St. Patrick's day isn't a national holiday, either. Nobody gets off work for Chinese New Year. Etc.

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Bashing Columbus Day is a direct attack on Italian Americans

Yeah, and kneeling for the anthem means you hate the troops.

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"You can't judge people from decades and centuries ago by today's standards"

Although I have my issues with Columbus and have for decades, I completely agree with the above statement. There is far to much of this practice, known as "presentism" now going on, especially among Millennials and younger people, but not exclusive to them. People wanting to wipe certain "racist" language out of Mark Twain books, for example. To understand history you must embody the context of the time.

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As horrible as it was.

We're talking honoring somebody. Is Columbus worth honoring?

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He did something big and important that we benefit from to this day.

Next question.

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And go to work.

And while we're thinking outside the box . . .

For-profit, non-government-sponsored sporting events -- Why do they play the National Anthem? I know what country I'm in; I'm not going to war.

I'm there to watch a bunch of over-developed man-boys throwing a ball around and knocking the hell out of each other.

Stop playing the National Anthem and play ball.

Done.

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For profit, non-government-sponsored sporting events

The NFL claims to be non-profit. Funny, right?

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There were in fact people living in 1492 who thought murder, rape, plunder, and slavery were wrong.

But even assuming you could take the average of all morality in Columbus's era, he was still a really bad person by that standard.

And you don't have to lay all the negatives of 500 years of colonialism solely at his feet to understand that he committed real and terrible crimes, directly, in his life time, that harmed actual people.

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He bragged about them. Screw him.

As for all this talk about how we're benefiting from his marvelous discovery ... how, exactly? He never set foot on the North American mainland. The first European settlements here didn't happen until a hundred years after he died. (Unless you count the Norsemen, Irish, etc.)

Columbus was a brutal idiot who managed to convince a couple of inbred royal idiots to give him a ton of money for his completely mistaken adventure. We might as well name a holiday for Bernie Madoff.

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Where can I see his bragging?

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Just this once, I'll do your homework for you.

In his journal, Columbus didn’t mince words about his intentions after meeting the Arawak natives in the Bahamas in 1492. He described the encounter thusly: “They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things ... They willingly traded everything they owned ... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features .... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane. ... They would make fine servants. ... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” Columbus would add: “As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts.”
. . .
In 1495, in a large slave raid, Columbus and his men rounded up 1,500 Arawak men, women, and children, and put them in pens. They selected what they considered the best natives and loaded them onto ships back to Spain. Two hundred died en route. After the survivors were sold as slaves in Spain, Columbus later wrote: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."

If you have the stomach for it, you can read extracts from his journals.

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Well there was so much info out there, I wanted to see specifically what you read. Thanks for being a wiseass

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For being a dipshit.

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The indigenous peoples of the Americas were living a Stone Age existence before Europeans arrived. They would have no more contributed to the progress of humanity than the uncontacted tribes in the heart of the Amazon.

And let's not pretend that the natives were living in some idyllic pacifistic eden in 1491; there was plenty of war, horror and pain to go around among the natives.

Columbus massively shaped the world we live in today. That's worth recognizing.

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Oh honey ....

I hope your parents didn't pay or you didn't pay anything for those history lessons that led you to believe any of what you just typed.

Ouch.

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Let's examine some of those lunchbox claims:

They would have no more contributed to the progress of humanity than the uncontacted tribes in the heart of the Amazon.

I refer you to the Iroquois Confederation. Their system of government was a direct inspiration for our own Constitution, as has been acknowleged by the US Senate.

And let's not pretend that the natives were living in some idyllic pacifistic eden in 1491....

The Taino that Columbus encountered and ravaged were, in fact, living in just such a peaceful Eden until he arrived. He goes on at some length about how peaceful and easily enslaved they were. The war, horror, and pain that wiped them out were inflicted on them by Columbus and his men.

Columbus massively shaped the world we live in today.

As I said elsewhere, Columbus was an idiot who stumbled on some islands full of people who were helpless to defend themselves against brutal thugs wielding advanced technology. The Americas had been repeatedly discovered before he blundered into those islands, and would certainly have been found by someone else without his involvement.

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you hate Columbus because liberalism, but you trust him enough to believe his outsider's description of the peoples he conquered and his assertion that they had no complexity or history to their society at all. And absolutely no warning bells go off in your head when you hear yourself projecting a Westerner's idea of a Noble Savage onto those people to try to make your point? Ooookaaaay then.

As for the Iroqois Confederacy being a "direct inspiration" for the US Constitution? I could see how you'd believe that if you treated the editorial page of the NYT as if it were the Gods speaking down from Olympus. In real life, however, there's quite a bit of disagreement over what "inspiration" if any there was. You don't need to go past the first few sources on the wikipedia page to see that the question is anything but settled. But again, if SJW editorials in the NYT are fact, then why bother with any follow-up. Whatever you find would be either superfluous or blasphemous, so no point in looking.

And "idiot" or not, Columbus's expedition was the first success and he risked his own life for it. That's why it's his name on the holiday and not some Viking dude whose attempt at colonization of Greenland fizzled and was forgotten soon after.

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I do not grant the NYT any particular special knowledge, but you seem to have blinded yourself with hatred of them. Here's a different body going on record about the Iroquois Confederacy's contribution to our form of government:

Oct. 21, 1988
[H. Con. Res. 331]
IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY AND INDIAN
NATIONS—RECOGNIZING CONTRIBUTIONS
TO THE UNITED STATES
Whereas the original framers of the Constitution, including, most notably, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, are known to have greatly admired the concepts of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy;

Whereas the confederation of the original Thirteen Colonies into one republic was influenced by the political system developed by the Iroquois Confederacy as were many of the democratic principles which were incorporated into the Constitution itself;

Whereas, [etc. etc.]

You think because people argue about something, that makes it questionable. People argue about the Earth being billions of years old, about climate change, about all sorts of things. That doesn't falsify those things. In this case, you're so far on the stupid side of wrong that you should just give up.

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The extent of the influence of Six Nations law on the U.S. Constitution is disputed by other scholars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Law_of_Peace#Influence_on_the_United...

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EVERYTHING is disputed by "other scholars." They haven't convinced me, or the U.S. Congress. You want to let them convince you, knock yourself out.

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The 1988 resolution I'm not in a position to reminisce about, but the 2005 re-dredging I remember quite well. And I'll say again what I said about it then:

There is no evidence that the Iroqois Confederacy had any kind of influence on the framing of the US Constitution, but there is more than ample evidence (provided by the framers themselves) that the US Constitution arose out of classical history and the European Enlightenment.

Since we seem to like to believe the words of dead white men in this thread, I submit to you that the writings of the founding fathers ought to be taken at face value.

The contrary narrative is a conspiracy theory made up by people with an agenda looking for something, anything, that takes away from the perceived pedestal we place the founders on. Saying they stole their ideas from the noble savage is one form of that. Obama telling us all "you didn't build that" is another. Both are bullshit, as evidenced by their demonstrable falsehood and the quickness of their defenders to "refute" arguments with childish invective.

Also, you're a doo-doo head!

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What does Obama have to do with this? BTW, you seem to be completely misinterpreting his quote and disingenuously taking it out of context (and using some pretty old talking points).

"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires."

I believe it is quite clear in context what President Obama was saying and what he meant by his words.

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I just wasn't a fan.

And you know, honestly, two different people can take that quote in two different ways. When I heard it, I didn't read it, I heard a clip of him say it. And when he got to 'you didn't build that,' his voice pitched up and there was emphasis on the 'you' and a smirk on his face. So that's what I took his meaning to be.

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Why not?

And still, they persisted. Seems good enough to me.

Or honor nobody. Both good options. Do you even know what mutilations Columbus directly ordered? He was one sick puppy by ANYONE'S standard. Quit stanning for actual factual torturers.

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What Columbus did was horrifying and does not merit celebration. Read the actual historical literature. It's horrifying. Indigenous Peoples' Day all the way.

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The only reason old racist Italian dudes care about the name of this "holiday" (which almost all the rest of this country is over, btw) is because they know the second they are dead, it becomes irrelevant.

Otherwise who freaking cares what the national holiday is called? Literally nobody on this planet of Earth thinks you can't still apply for permits and throw a parade.

IF you find it threatening to share your Columbus parade with a First Nations day, maybe that is cause for self-reflection.

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"The only reason old racist Italian dudes care about the name of this "holiday" (which almost all the rest of this country is over, btw) is because they know the second they are dead, it becomes irrelevant."

I have long said that Columbus Day and these various other ethnic parades, festivals and holidays are irrelevant. I am glad people are finally catching up. The Columbus Day Parade is for racist old Italian dudes. The St. Patrick's Day Parade is legendary for it's drunken, loutish behavior. There is invariably a shooting at the Caribbean festival (of which there was just a long thread here). And, as an LGBT man, don't even get me started on the commercialized travesty that parade has become. I wouldn't be sorry to see them all go. We are all Americans here, old and new arrivals, any and all orientations, united under one flag. Enough with these outdated culture celebrations.

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You do realize that these events aren't just for the people of the particular ethnic group they are celebrating?

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What is Cultural Appropriation?

I'll take Other Leftie Silliness for 500, Alex.

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" old racist Italian dudes "

Would that have been allowed as a comment if it was a reference to Jews or blacks? Now we know who are real bigots and who is protected. But it's ok, because Tony Soprano is a racist. It must be true.

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Would that have been allowed as a comment if it was a reference to Jews or blacks?

If the shoe fits? Why not?

I grew up in an Italian-American community. The manufactured affection for Columbus Day, IMO, is a reaction to historical and no longer extant bigotry against Italian-Americans. At a time when they were widely thought of as second-class citizens, Italian-Americans glommed onto an "All-American" holiday as a way to not only celebrate their heritage, but encourage others to celebrate it as well -- this despite the fact that Columbus was not an "Italian" and wouldn't have even known what the word meant. It was simply the easiest way, under the circumstances, to say, "See? Italians are okay." That need has not existed for at least a generation now. It's time to let this one go. Columbus was an execrable human being and not worth celebrating.

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I'm fine with changing it to Indigenous People's Day (as Cambridge already has), but I wonder what we do with all of these:

Columbus Avenue (in Boston, and in Somerville, and in NYC, and probably other places too)
Columbia Road
Columbia Point
Columbia Street in Cambridge (and a bit of Somerville)
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus, Indiana
Columbus, Georgia
Columbia University
The District of Columbia
The Columbia River
Colombia, the country

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I'm fine with changing it to Indigenous People's Day (as Cambridge already has), but I wonder what we do with all of these:

Nothing, everything, rename them or don't. Are you OCD, or do you just like to pretend that no task can be accomplished without simultaneously performing all related tasks in the entire world? If it's a genuine disorder, you have my sympathy, but if you're just being disingenuous in an attempt to derail, you can go pound sand.

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At what point do we stop giving direct or indirect credit to people who were known for the bad things they did? Should every library named after Andrew Carnegie change its name? There is a Carnegie Library in Portsmouth NH. Should that library change its name?

Should the Nobel Prize be renamed since it was named and funded by a person who invented a device that could be used to commit vast violence?

Monuments to the Confederate leaders is a clear line of what does not belong. The people who wanted to dissolve the nation, and maintain the sin and abomination of slavery were flatly wrong. There was no honor to their actions.

But are the lines as clear with others? How do we apply that line to one when another is arguably worse? Carnegie and Frick's company countenanced the murder of miners. Should the Pinkerton company exist today since the earlier management and Pinkerton workers committed the actual crime?

Are their any heroes who are pure? Is there anyone whose hands are not dirty someway, somehow?

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Keep the ambiguity today, make vague promises about tomorrow. Then BAM! Right when you need a distraction you reach into the bag of tricks and pick out a historical figure to rouse the rabble against.

Like PT Barnum used to say, after all.

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Like PT Barnum used to say, after all.

If you're referring to "There's a sucker born every minute," you're wrong about that, too.

No modern historian takes seriously the routine attribution of this slogan to P. T. Barnum.

Guess you're the sucker, if you think Barnum said that.

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I see. Here, absence of evidence is evidence of absence, but with the Iroquois, absence of evidence is evidence of racism. Gotcha. Glad we cleared that up.

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Carnegie funded a huge program of public-library building across the country -- more than 2500 of them over a 45-year span.

Carnegie’s grants were very large for the era and his library philanthropy is one of the largest philanthropic activities, by value, in history.

Maybe it was all fueled by guilt, and maybe many people would say the harm he did outweighs the benefit of his philanthropy, but to deny that philanthropy entirely by taking his name off the libraries is myopic.

Nobel's Peace Prize was an attempt to undo the harm his invention of dynamite had caused. It would be counterproductive to rename the award.

In contrast, the slaver Confederates and the slaver Columbus were completely unrepentant -- even proud -- of the horrors they perpetrated.

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For Carnegie there is still debate as to whether his philanthropy was out of guilt or out of religious training, simply what wealth were expected to do or if he was capable of vicarious brutality and murder and yet felt some authentic altruism. On the other hand it can be argued that the profit Carnegie enjoyed was made on the backs of his employees who probably did not enjoy the lifestyle that he enjoyed. So is it fair to use his name when he did not suffer to earn the profits that he used to memorialize himself? I'm not taking a position either way but believe that these are important questions that at least deserve consideration.

When a Nobel prize is awarded does the award include an explanation that the award is to balance out the profit that Nobel made from creating what could and has been used as a weapon to kill people? If not then the prize is hides the guilt that led to its creation.

These are only two examples. Are there any heroes who are pure, who have not done harm? Is money enough to hide from history the harm that supposed heroes did?

Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic. That may make him a hero. He also supported Hitler. Not so heroic. But is Lindbergh's not so nice side taught when Lindbergh's name comes up in a school lesson?

Henry Ford is praised with making affordable cars and developing mass production. When school kids are taught about Ford are they also taught that he hated Jews?

The slaver Columbus was unrepentant. Has Rome fully repented of centuries of torture, totalitarianism, barbaric acts such as castrating boys to create castrati? Are all Catholics repented for the torture of the inquisition? How about repentance for failing God and humankind for not marshalling all the moral and organizational forces of Catholicism to stamp out before it grew into a monster early 20th century European fascism? Or the dictatorships of South America?

However, I do wonder why Columbus has a holiday? He was only one of many explorers. He didn't discover "America." Amerigo Vespucci Day would be more accurate. I do support a day honoring the human beings and civilizations that existed on this continent before Europeans arrived. Celebrating in the popular intellect (granted a problematic space) the civilizations that existed here before Europeans is needed if we are to have a full understanding of human culture. But then US Americans, beyond highly educated, are weak and deficient where understanding other cultures is concerned. If that were not the case then the fear that leads to bigotry might not be so prevalent.

I also fully agree that monuments to the Confederacy debacle are wrong. Monuments to the Civil War are right. The people on the wrong side are recognized. The hagiography of Confederate "heroes" shows that bigotry and a deeply set and wrongful government for the few, against the many and a pro-class system is still strong in the nation 100 plus years after the Civil War.

None of this is simple. But it all is worthy of discussion.

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When a Nobel prize is awarded does the award include an explanation that the award is to balance out the profit that Nobel made from creating what could and has been used as a weapon to kill people? If not then the prize is hides the guilt that led to its creation.

The Award was not intended to "balance out" any profit. It's named the Peace Prize because Nobel hoped it would encourage the cause of peace. In fact, his invention of dynamite was intended to serve the same cause. He thought its destructive properties would make war unthinkable. He's not the only -- or last -- man to make that mistake. The Prize is not intended to hide Nobel's guilt. It's a frank acknowledgement of that guilt.

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I did read about Henry Ford's less stellar moments in history class. The lesson was, back then Americans didn't object to anti-Semitism. After witnessing the inhumanity of the holocaust, public attitudes changed for the better. And Henry Ford built an industrial empire that helped shape the America we live in today. Among his many contributions was the large-scale application and refinement of of mass production techniques developed by the end of the 19th century....

I also read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the original Klingon. The lesson was, back then, people really thought differently about blacks. Over the intervening years, attitudes changed for the better. And Mark Twain was a titan of American literature....

What the lesson was NOT was that anything written before the late 1980's is so horribly irredeemably offensive that it must be ignored and suppressed and knocked down at every opportunity, that any historical footnotes are not worth learning about, and that any achievements from those times are tainted and must not be recognized.

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Huckleberry Finn taught, Columbus took everything including credit.

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It's interesting how those who can't bear the thought of change always want to impose a purity test on anyone who tries to make things better in any degree. Do you handle your housework with similar rigor? I suppose you haven't swept in twenty years because the baseboards are less than perfect.

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I'm told they're delicious over the campfire!

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you racist.

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Holly's recipe.

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The repetition of the same insults is more akin to elementary school children who put down what is different, aping the other children who have not learned to manage and control the side of themselves that enjoys putting others In other words children who remain very uncivilized.

Repeating the same insults, the same put downs gives a minor chuckle along the lines of, "What will Fish come up with next?" Usually left disappointed because Fish's fishy words pretty much all have the same smell of rot.

But keep trying. Even an insult can be funny if it was smart.

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It somehow used to be confined to small children (and easily detected by teachers and parents).

Parent: Little Fishy - didn't I say "no cookies before dinner".
Fishy: BUT ADAM AND LIZ STOMP IN PUDDLES!

Supposed adults using it to deflect attention from actually discussing the topic at hand? Also childish.

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Why can't we keep Columbus Day......and ADD an Indiginous People's Day to our calendar...where we celebrate and understand the original inhabitants of our country?

I don't think anyone would be against an Indiginous People's Day.

WHat pisses people off is the need to eliminate history and eliminate Christopher Columbus from history (with a bad rap to boot!).

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or at least some versions of it, used to have that vibe. But I believe the PC thing to do today is to wear black and lament white privilege, whatever that means.

I'd wager that the only federal holiday that's safe is Labor Day. Because socialism. I'm not so sure about MLK day. My guess is they'll get around to devouring him eventually.

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for all those who want to rename a long established holiday.

Get it on the statewide ballot as a question so ALL voters can have a say in this matter.

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