Christine Armario, AOL News, October 11, 2009
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Columbus’ stature in U.S. classrooms has declined somewhat through the years, and many districts will not observe his namesake holiday on Monday. Although lessons vary, many teachers are trying to present a more balanced perspective of what happened after Columbus reached the Caribbean and the suffering of indigenous populations.
“The whole terminology has changed,” said James Kracht, executive associate dean for academic affairs in the Texas A&M College of Education and Human Development. “You don’t hear people using the world ‘discovery’ anymore like they used to. ‘Columbus discovers America.’ Because how could he discover America if there were already people living here?”
In Texas, students start learning in the fifth grade about the “Columbian Exchange”—which consisted not only of gold, crops and goods shipped back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean, but diseases carried by settlers that decimated native populations.
In McDonald, Pa., 30 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, fourth-grade students at Fort Cherry Elementary put Columbus on trial this year—charging him with misrepresenting the Spanish crown and thievery. They found him guilty and sentenced him to life in prison.
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The federal holiday itself also is not universally recognized. Schools in Miami, Dallas, Los Angeles and Seattle will be open; New York City, Washington and Chicago schools will be closed.
The day is an especially sensitive issue in places with larger native American populations.
{snip}
Many recall decades ago when there was scant mention of indigenous groups in discussions about Columbus. Kracht remembers a picture in one of his fifth-grade textbooks that showed Columbus wading to shore with a huge flag and cross.
{snip}
Kracht said an emerging multiculturalism led more people to investigate the cruelties suffered by the Taino population in the 1960s and ’70s, along with the 500th anniversary in 1992.
However, there are people who believe the discussion has shifted too far. Patrick Korten, vice president of communications for the Catholic fraternal service organization the Knights of Columbus, recalled a note from a member who saw a lesson at a New Jersey school.
The students were forced to stand in a cafeteria and not allowed to eat while other students teased and intimidated them—apparently so they could better understand the suffering indigenous populations endured because of Columbus, Korten said.
“My impression is that in some classrooms, it’s anything but a balanced presentation,” Korten, said. “That it’s deliberately very negative, which is a matter of great concern because that is not accurate.”
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Original article
(Posted on October 12, 2009)
Comments
Get over it. Colombus changed the world. Look where white civilization was at that time compared to the Africans, the Indians (in India), and the Natives. Let me say it again, Columbus changed the world.
Do you really think a 5th grader cares about the revisionist version or the version I learned in the 70’s? NOT! They just see Columbus Day as a school day or a vacation day.
Why don’t they teach how the “natives” and their “advanced” culture sacrificed humans including infants or how the enslaved each other or how brutal these cultures were.
“In McDonald, Pa., 30 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, fourth-grade students at Fort Cherry Elementary put Columbus on trial this year—charging him with misrepresenting the Spanish crown and thievery. They found him guilty and sentenced him to life in prison.”
- - Great idea. Now how about putting Marchin Lootin King on trial for conspiring with Communists? How about putting Michael King on trial for plagiarism? How about putting him on trial for adultery? How about taking his holiday away from him - King who is the only American now with a Holiday named after him. I guess that would get someone labeled a “racist”.
The students were forced to stand in a cafeteria and not allowed to eat while other students teased and intimidated them—apparently so they could better understand the suffering indigenous populations endured because of Columbus, Korten said.
Or the teachers could have let all the students not eat period as a sign of the world wide famine that would be the norm if Western Europeans had not colonized and tamed the bread basket of the world.
Or maybe they could have nailed a female student to the wall and enacted various American Indian rituals performed on pregnant settlers so the spirits of the unborn wouldn’t haunt them.
Or even they could have just captured and enslaved them until they proved themselves to become one of the tribe.
Western European’s were and are the only race to even try and help scattered nomadic tribal stone age peoples adapt to modern life and just like in freeing the African slaves this is the thanks we get.
Atrocities were commited by ALL peoples in those days. Funny, Whites are the only ones who get blamed for any wrong doing.
“Although lessons vary, many teachers are trying to present a more balanced perspective of what happened after Columbus reached the Caribbean and the suffering of indigenous populations.”
Barf-bag please!
The “suffering” of “indigenous populations” is of no concern to whites or our children, since these “indigenous populations” were sacrificing and butchering each other alive long before Europeans ever got here. When you really think about, Cortes and Columbus should be honored not only for discovering and civilizing the New World, but also for reducing the suffering of the “indigenous populations” by way of judiciously deconstructing their violently superstitious and inequality based social systems once they came here.
Any white “teacher” who would say otherwise and instruct students in that direction is not only a mendacious fool, but also a child abuser in my book!
End of discussion!!!
Columbus was “bossy”? How simplistic. How else are you going to be the captain of a ship (or the commander of an expedition) except by being the “boss”? Ships weren’t run on a democratic basis by taking a vote. I don’t think they still are!!
Neither was he bringing them smallpox and foreign diseases (in any conscious way)… any more than they were offering him syphilis in excnange. (Was there any mention of diseases brought back to Europe? No!) At the least, this was a two-way exchange, at a time when the nature of disease was not understood (by either party). There was no malicious intent. If I catch a cold from you, does that make you an evil person?
Btw, I noticed there were only 3 little white children in that class. Sad. They are totally outnumbered.
Anyone who benefits from the arrival of Columbus to “The New World” is a hypocrite to villify him. And since EVERYONE, including indigenous populations have gained in the long run, they are engaging in hypocrisy as well.
“Kracht said an emerging multiculturalism led more people to investigate the cruelties suffered by the Taino population.”
If they want to dwell on cruelty (and they seem to), I hope they also learned about the far worse cruelties that the Tainos suffered at the hands of their neighbors, the cannibal Caribs, who used them as a source of meat.
Another thing: I hope he emphasized to those black children that if it were not for Columbus, none of them would be here today. They did not come here on their own ships, or with their own explorers!
No matter how they got here, or why, the fact remains that they are here today, they’re American citizens, and they are survivors.
Furthermore, if their ancestors had remained behind (in Africa) they probably would have suffered the same unpleasant fate as the Taino Indians of the Caribbean. It was only when an American market for slaves developed that native African rulers found it was more profitable to SELL their war captives than to EAT them.
I am glad that our white culture is opening up to the truths of major people in human history and not just teaching what we want to believe. It is healthy but double-sided. These liberals that love to teach about the bad side of white historical figures to further truth would disagree when it comes to non-whites. Would the author want American children to learn that Mohammed ordered his captives heads cut off, and then sell their wives and daughters into slavery? What about the HORRIBLE racists things Ghandi said about blacks? Nope. Unflatering truth should only be taught if the subject is white. The sad thing is that white kid’s education suffer and they come thinking that Mohammed was peaceful, ect.
White people need to claim a day, week or month of our own as a way to celebrate our heiratage. Blacks have one. Indians (feathers) do. Hispanics, etc. I thought it would be a great idea if we did that on Colombus day.
If they’re going to look at Columbus’s dark side, why stop there? What about the dark side of North America’s aboriginal populations? Hygiene standards were incredibly abysmal among some bands, leading to high infant mortality rates. Infant girls were often killed shortly after birth by their mothers. On the west coast, slavery was commonplace. The Iroquois vanquished a number of other tribes, such as the Huron & Tobacco aboriginals. Inuit feared aboriginals to the south for their violent actions against them.
Aboriginals sometimes fished rivers to near extinction. Whole herds of buffalo were stampeded over cliffs, and not all of that meat was used. European standards of medical care were all but non-existent. Wars were commonplace, as were raiding parties. Aboriginals routinely scalped their victims, often while they were still alive. In some tribes, women were nothing more than beasts of burden, with no gender equality worth speaking of.
I could go on, but you get my point. It’s not as though evil Columbus wreaked havoc on a continent of peace-loving utopian idealists who lived at one with each other and with nature. The truth is harder, dirtier, and for liberals, unfathomable.
This is what happens when parents are asleep at the switch. We let these lefties and progressives sneak in the back door unnoticed. If I had any children I would be at every school board meeting complaining like hell. I could see this coming in the ‘80’s and that’s one reason why I gave up my teaching career. The administrators were more interested in making Johnny feel good about himself and raising his self esteem than they were about giving him a decent education. This has been going on for two geberations now and it explains why we elected a moron as our leader.
A more “nuanced picture” of Columbus means an “anti-White picture.” The writer notes approvingly how these elementary school kids have held “trials” for Columbus and “sentenced” him to life in prison. Just what does that prove? That they know nothing about him except what has been taught them in school — and nowadays, that is almost all bad.
He mistreated the Indians? Maybe so. That’s how more advances civilizations have always treated more primitive ones that they came into contact with — especially if it was a contest to see who gets the land. And what kind of nonsense is it to say he “couldn’t have discovered America” because there were already people living here? Europeans didn’t know about America — or the vast majority of them didn’t — before his voyage. That’s what has always been meant by the term “discovery.”
And if as one interviewee says there is a villain as the flip side of every hero, why aren’t the educational establishment and the mainstream media anxious to give a more “nuanced” picture of Martin Luther King, with his father’s arbitrary change of their names when he was a child, his plagiarism, his philandering, his periodic drunkenness, etc? Depends whose ox is being gored, doesn’t it?
But without Columbus there would be no diversity! If Whites had never come to the new world the entire western hemisphere would be populated exclusively by red skinned Indians. Thanks to Columbus we now have White people in America and thanks to White people we now have Black people. And if Columbus had never come there would be no Hispanics as the majority of them are a white and Indian mix.
“You don’t hear people using the world ‘discovery’ anymore like they used to. ‘Columbus discovers America.’ Because how could he discover America if there were already people living here?”
These people repeat this idea as if it’s some profound revelation.
Let’s re-phrase it so it’s more acceptable:
“Christopher discovered the North American continent on behalf of Europeans who were unaware of the land mass to the east. That people were already living there does not alter this discovery nor does it diminish the achievement. Had the North American people had the means to sail west, they would have discovered Europe for the people of North America”
Well… Fourth grade seems young to expose children to some of the harsher world reality’s. For instance.. when teaching about Einstein do they tell the children that he beat his wife?( I heard its so) Or in Sunday school will they teach tender minds some of Jesus harsher sayings , such as,: “I come to bring a sword between a father and son,.. a daughter and mother” etc… or “Who doesn’t hate his mother and father is unworthy of me” or when they teach of the native Americans are fourth graders exposed to the cruelty’s the natives inflicted on eachother? A little house cleaning is fine with me but I think in seventh grade perhaps an intro furnished with advocates and detractors might be acceptable as childrens minds are more firm and experienced. As far as Discovery…the detractors have a point but he did discover it for continental Europe. I have read that Columbus was brutal at times and it is very sad if true concerning the spread of disease.
Somebody smart should write a good concise article about the anti-white drift of Columbus Day. It would be nice to have something like that to send out next year to everybody in my email address book.
I get a lot of junk email everyday and much of it is political propaganda. I know a lot of people forward everything they receive. I bet if we had a good article to paste and send, including a link to American Renaissance, it would have a big impact. So many people forward political junk email that if a good American Renaissance article were to get slipped into the mix, it wouldn’t be inappropriate at all.
Juxtapose this read with the story on the lionization of Medgar Evers and you can plainly see that they are transforming our heroes into villains while exalting their own to demigod status.
Fine! Let’s now have a “balanced” perspective for MLK Day.
This is all about minimalizing the staggering importance of Columbus’ discovery of the America’s. Perhaps not the first to actually ‘discover’ it since, IMO, the Viking may have traveled here first, but Columbus did was he discovered America for the whole civilized world and these sissy Leftists know it.
On the topic of the American Indian, I must tell you the truth, I actually feel sorry for them. His land was stolen and his race was effectually wiped out, but, there has always been great migrations of people for all of human history. When White Europeans colonized and developed our great nation, he was only doing what great peoples have always done.
This nation was founded, pioneered and developed by White European-Americans and no other.
RobChapmanOnline.com
Tried in absentia and sentenced to life in prison. How very Stalinist. Next these bratlings will be arresting their own parents. This is the future the Reds have planned for us.
Columbus didn’t discover America, Leif Eriksson did.
They should have the students watch Mel Gibsons, “Apocalypto,” for a taste of how advanced these wonderful native South Americans were.
In my youth Columbus was considered a courageous hero and a source of pride—particularly to Italian Americans. Now, he is depicted as a Genoese Pirate or proto-Nazi goose-stepping beyond Reinhardt Henrich. It says much about the sad state of our country that this is what we’ve come to. When civilizations lose confidence in their culture and history, they are in terminal decline.
Maybe in a strict universal sense Columbus did not discover America but, the American Indians sure did not discover Europe.
Columbus did discover America!!!
Maybe the Indians were displaced …I do not see liberals bemoaning how few Caucasians are left in the Caucus Mountains.
Indoctrinating our children to hate our historical heroes is part of the communist agenda and if we passively continue to allow these traitors to work their treachery we will have no one but ourselves to blame when our progeny come to believe our heritage is no longer worth preserving…
If we are going to judge Columbus by today’s standards of behavior then we should also judge the native populations that he discovered by todays standards.
By todays standards of behavior many of these natives were murders, rapist, child molestors and even cannibals. They lived by the rules that were acceptable to their society at the time and so did Columbus.
Colubus enslaved and killed people for gold and we do it for oil so where is the difference. We haven’t changed that much since the days of Columbus, only the way we view things to try and make ourselves feel better about what we are doing.
They were really more honest in the days of Columbus because they didn’t try to hide what they were doing behind lies like national security. The big dog gets the bone and that’s just the way it’s always been and always will be.
We are teaching children to live in a fantasy world because life hasn’t changed only the way we view life. Plenty of people are still being killed because they have things that others want but are unable to defend it.
I must tell you the truth, I actually feel sorry for them. His land was stolen and his race was effectually wiped out,
AND NOW! it is happening to us White people.
From the article:
“…Although lessons vary, many teachers are trying to present a more balanced perspective of what happened after Columbus reached the Caribbean and the suffering of indigenous populations…”
No balanced perspectives are being presented. The textbooks portray a warped view of Whites as genocidal colonists, spreading disease and slavery to the the peaceful, gaia-loving native Americans and Africans. White inventions, technology and creativity are attributed increasingly to non-Whites or dismissed as just ‘being there.’ Whites are given credit for nothing.
A better lesson for the kiddies would be to imagine the world if Columbus had never discovered America—if evil White Western Civilization had been stopped in its tracks, or better yet, eradicated before it had a chance to manifest itself as colonialism, slavery and genocide. After all, in the school curriculum that’s how Whites and Western Civilization are portrayed.
Have the little lefties experience a day without evil White creations and inventions—no cell phones, no computers, no television and no video games. Not only those White inventions, but the entire electrical grid that powers them would have to be shut down! No electricity for an entire day—no lights, no heat no air conditioning, no modern conveniences.
We want to keep it real, right?
Water would have to be drawn and drunk straight from the local pond or stream (remind ‘em Whites ‘discovered’ the benefits of clean water, effectively doubling life spans). They could not take a school bus or ride in a car since evil Whites invented the internal combustion engine, but would have to walk to wherever it is they need to go—certainly not the mall, another ‘evil’ invention from Whites.
If we were to get serious, they’d also have to forage for food and figure out how to fend off violent, cannibalistic roving bands and hungry animals that would be happy to dispose of them and their loved ones in the bloodiest way possible to eliminate competition and provide a source of scarce protein.
And of course, they could not use the mighty, concise, English Language, also a product of colonial, genocidal Whites. They would have to find another way to communicate that day— certainly no writing, as there was no written language in North America.
How many would be left? A quarter of the class? Fewer? At this point, (if one weren’t in fear of his job and pension) the teacher could tell those sitting down that because of White Western Civilizations and the discoveries that sprang forth from it, they are alive today living in a civilization created by Whites that has provided them with cushy life style.
Ask them the reason why so many from every country on earth risk their lives in rickety boats or across scorching deserts to join a civilization created by White Western Civilization—one that is portrayed as evil. Ask which country they would prefer to live in and why.
Remind them to thank Whites for providing them with everything that makes their lives possible.
Bon
“In McDonald, Pa., 30 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, fourth-grade students at Fort Cherry Elementary put Columbus on trial this year—charging him with misrepresenting the Spanish crown and thievery. They found him guilty and sentenced him to life in prison.”
I don’t know if anybody else noticed this but it’s interesting how this stupid teacher is teaching her students the evils of Columbus but she failed to tell them that you need a unanimous vote, not 9 out of 12 to convict a person of murder or any crime in America.
Columbus was white, male, Christian, of European origin, and (presumably) heterosexual.
Of course people are going to try and downplay his achievements.
20 — Schoolteacher wrote at 1:10 AM on October 13:
You are right about the term “discover.” I would like to put a bit of a finer point on it, especially where geographic explorations like Colummbus’ is concerned. The main reason that Colunbus’ discovery was important was because he had a point of referrence. That is, he could chart and report on where he had been and that could be added to a growing, scientific determination of the location of places and peoples. This meant that repeat journeys could be made and civilization could spread. This is important to the entire human race, even if the civilization that is growing is flawed - as are all civilizations.
Contrast that to any primitive group; they wander with little or no understanding that they share a world with anyone but the immediate neighbors they trade and war with. They may wander over centuries into new regions, as the Siberian Mongols or Mongoloid tribes did thousands of years ago, but they had no idea of where they were, so they never journeyed back, even for a visit. Fleeing from natural phenomena, more agressive tribes, or following even dumber animals around for their food supply.
It has been technological advances, ever since the wheel, that has slowly advanced some humans. Those humans who had the spark of intelligence and curiosity to question and experiment are the ones who expanded and grew wealthy. And today, those people are most often called bigots, racists, and exploiters of others by people who complain while living with the benefits, including a longer life span, that those “exploiters” brought to the world. Since they are set to overcome the world with their numbers, we can take some quiet satisfaction in knowing that as they suppress and eliminate us, they will also be determining their own demise.
Connor aid: “The students were forced to stand in a cafeteria and not allowed to eat while other students teased and intimidated them—apparently so they could better understand the suffering indigenous populations endured because of Columbus.”
That is child abuse! If done under any other pretext (than brainwashing chidren about evil whites), the teachers would be fired for it.
And make no mistake, Columbus is being used here as a symbol for whites — all whites. When they say this suffering was “endured because of Columbus”, they really mean because all white people.
“Anyone who benefits from the arrival of Columbus to “The New World” is a hypocrite to villify him.”
Columbus most certainly did discover America — for the greater, outside world. The Indians of the Americas knew nearly nothing of the world beyond the bounds of whatever moutain range, forest or prarie land that marked the limits of their horizons.
I’m always fascinated by the bizarre idea that Europeans “brought diseases to the New World.” Since germ theory wasn’t known for another four hundred years, how could Europeans possibly have been guilty of that? Also, people seem to forget that syphilis was brought back to Europe by explorers returning from the New World, just like smallpox came to Europe by way of Moorish invaders. Germ exchange is a two-way street, after all. Should we hold Native Americans solely responsible for the spread of STDs?
Ah, well, I suppose one can’t expect anything from public schools but politically correct ignorance. Our tax dollars at work.
“Juxtapose this with the story on the lionization of Medgar Evers and you can plainly see that they are transforming our heroes into villains, while exalting their own to demigod status.”
They are taking it slowly, step by step. They’ve already downgraded Washington’s Birthday to President’s Day, leaving MLK as the only American with his own named holiday. Right now, they’re working on deconstructing Columbus. In time, it will come to the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, our history, and all the principles on which this country was founded. But they will have to wait a bit longer for that. One thing at a time.
One thing that greatly distresses me to see is that the extreme left minority is assertive, while the rest of us (the silent majority) are only reactive. They have a plan, and we have none. They are always pushing and advancing, while we merely react to their thrusts. We never take the imitative. It’s like two dancers — one leads and the other follows. We only follow. They push, and we yield. We’ve got to become more pro-active!
“He mistreated the Indians? Maybe so. That’s how more advanced civilizations have always treated more primitive ones that they came into contact with — especially if it was a contest to see who gets the land. “
The first encounter between different races is not always pretty. (Indians and Esquimos never got along either, btw.) But critics should consider what the Indians would have done to us, if it had been the other way around. Look at what the Aztecs and Mayas did to their conquered victims. When Cortez conquered the Aztecs, they were lucky that he did not do to them what they would have done to him (what they would have expected from a conqueror).
The critics of Columbus should consider also what would have happened if the Americas had been “discovered” by the Arabs or the Chinese. For example, just look at the Hindu Holocaust which occurred when the Arabs, Persians and Moghuls invaded India. It was open season on the polytheistic Hindus, who were regarded as sub-human by the Moslems, fit only for slavery. Tens of millions of Indians were slaughtered or were carried off into slavery abroad in Arabia and Persia.
In sum, the American Indians were eventually bound to be discovered by the rest of the world. That was inevitable. They were very lucky that it was Europeans who “discovered” them instead of some others.
If you were marooned on some remote island, or lost somewhere in the jungle … and if I found you, would it be safe to say that I “discovered” you? I would say so. That’s quite reasonable.
YOU may have known that you were there all along, but nobody else did! So, from our point of view, we found you. (And you didn’t know about us either; it was WE who initiated the contact.)
As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Columbus dicovered America. (Yes, it’s true that the Vikings got here first, and maybe some Polynesians or Celts or Chinese, but it was Columbus who opened up the Americas, put them firmly on the map, and put them in touch with the world.)
Liberals really hate all the accomplishments of European people that helped make their lives better today. They should all be sent to the third world countries if they’re that unhappy with Western Civilization.
Well the Spanish did decimate South America. There’s no getting around that. However Columbus did write that he felt that the native people should be respected and preserved by all possible means. Columbus was an explorer not a conqueror. It was those who came after him, following the word of god, that really screwed things up.
Show me a good alternative to white civilization. Show me a country or city or town dominated by blacks or mexicans or arabs that isn’t sexist, third world, extremely anti-gay, very religiously bigoted, corrupt, socialized, and where its every man for themselves? (Excuse me, my PC friends, I mean every ‘person’ for themselves.)
“Wars were commonplace, as were raiding parties. Aboriginals routinely scalped their victims, often while they were still alive. In some tribes, women were little more than beasts of burden, with no gender equality worth speaking of.
But that’s exactly what a lot of non-Americans really do believe, I’m afraid … the result of seeing too many Walt Disney-type Pocahontas fantasies. (I’m not kidding, I really mean that.) Many of them truly believe that the American continents were populated by gentle, peaceful tribes living in perfect harmony with nature and with each other —- until evil whites arrived, disrupting this earthly paradise, and introduced them to the notions of greed, violence, and war. From that moment on, all hell broke loose and it was chaos. All this evil was brought to them by whites from Europe (not to mention disease, as if Indians didn’t have any previously). Ah, yes. No sickness, no war, no violence. All those things were spread by the White Man.
A German acquaintance of mine, a socialist, and hardly un-educated, was absolutely horrified when I told him that there had been terrible wars and atrocities that went on among the American Indians, and that some tribes even exterminated others (eg. the Iroquois exterminated the Erie’s.) He simply could not believe this. He was shocked, and skeptical. He wouldn’t believe me. This was contrary to everything he had been taught! I later e-mailed him some historical pictures and articles, and he abruptly stopped corresponding! I suppose the cognitive dissonance was just too great for him to handle.
Bottom line: People will believe what they want to believe. And years of indoctrination are hard to overcome. Sometimes when people are faced with the uncomfortable contradiction between myth and reality, they will prefer the myth.
They have an episode on the gangster TV series “Soprano” in part devoted to this subject. American Indian demonstators attempt to protest at a Coloumbus Day parade where members of the “organzation” are present. The members of the “organization” send a clear and remarkably succinct message to the American Indian protestors!
Can anyone achieve anything anymore without team diversity either taking credit or denouncing the achiever as “racist”. AS for the accomplishments of white males, The U.S patent score is about 8 million to nothing. What hasn’t been invented by white males would be outliers on any statistical chart and to say anything else is another lie. Let the kids know about the human sacrifices, the cannabalism and the deviancy found in the uncivilized world. Let them know how white people explored the world while most of every one elses ancestors were still banging rocks together to make fire.
“Well the Spanish did decimate South America. There’s no getting around that. However Columbus did write that he felt that the native people should be respected and preserved by all possible means. Columbus was an explorer not a conqueror. It was those who came after him, following the word of god, that really screwed things up.”
No, I disagree. That is PC propaganda. South America lost most of its population chiefly due to smallpox and other diseases, not so much White violence. Smallpox isn’t something the Europeans intentionally caused or can be blamed for, much like nobody in his mind would blame Asian Silk Way traders for bringing the bubonic plague to Europe. It was an accident.
As for the role of religion in all this, those who think faith motivated the (much exaggerated, I suspect) atrocities committed by the Spaniards have it in reverse. It was mostly the Catholic clergymen such as de las Casas who denounced the abuses of the conquistadores. If it wasn’t for those clergymen, we wouldn’t even know about those atrocities. I too heard PC propaganda, such as the notion that enslavement of natives was started by some Papal bull called Dum Diversas, and took the time to actually read Papal encyclicas, and guess what? I found out that the Popes explicitly condemned enslavement of natives in at least two encyclicas.
“those who think faith motivated the (much exaggerated, I suspect) atrocities committed by the Spaniards have it in reverse”.
That’s no surprise to this AmRen reader.
“Show me a good alternative to white civilization. Show me a country or city or town dominated by blacks or mexicans or arabs that isn’t sexist, third world, extremely anti-gay, very religiously bigoted, corrupt, socialized, and where its every man for themselves?”
I suspect you have it in reverse also. Greed tempered by religion is what made the West great. The rest of the world is catching up with and even surpassing us and it’s not all the fault of non-whites. Well, maybe the way our values have been changed by the grievance mongering of non-whites.
45 Italian: The colonial administrators in Mexico got the Spanish government to recall the Dominicans, because the monks believed that the Indians had souls and therefore rights. It got to be just too annoying to go to Mass and hear a homily about treating your peons as humans. So, the Church outmanuvered the local overlords by sending Franciscans as replacements. You’re right, the Church was the defender of the Indians far more than it was their persecutor.
“It was mostly the clergymen who denounced the abuses of the conquistadores. If not for those clergymen, we wouldn’t even know about the atrocities….the Popes explicitly condemned enslavement of natives.” — Italian
And so did the Spanish crown. They tried. They could pass all the laws they wanted, but their laws were only theoretical and had little weight in distant places like Peru.
Madrid (and Rome) were very far away in the age of sail, almost light years — (in those times, a voyage to the New World was like a trip to the moon) — and their authority in the New World was less powerful than the lure of gold.
People who say the contrary, stressing the cruelty of Europeans, are just regurgitating standard leftist, anti-colonialist propaganda. Thanks to “Italian” for setting the record straight.
[Indeed, today we can get to the moon faster and more comfortably than they could travel from Spain to Peru. Our spacemen aren’t expected to encounter the same terrible privations and hardships. Nor do they face starvation, headhunters, hurricanes and cannibals. And ours are expected to return alive, which most of the conquistadors did not.]
