There were certain historical stories told when I was
growing up, many decades ago, that gave us heroes: George Washington, Abraham
Lincoln, Christopher Columbus. Yes, Columbus was one of those. And we had a day
to celebrate his story. This was before holidays all got shifted to Mondays, so
mostly they were school days, and we learned about that person on their day—and
maybe for the week or two of surrounding days.
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| Christopher Columbus, screenshot from The History Channel; I found it here. |
Then, in my adulthood, there’s been this movement to
disillusion us about these heroes. And others. We could add Thomas Jefferson
and Benjamin Franklin. And probably others.
But what I’m learning is that the disillusionment is based
on fake “facts.” There wasn’t really a cabal of historians for centuries
secretly hiding facts in order to sanitize and glorify the heroes. While human,
with the sensibilities of their times, our American heroes were really
extraordinarily good men who accomplished great things for mankind.
I don’t know why the lies are there. It seems perverse to
tear down, with lies, someone we should admire and honor—someone who isn’t here
to defend himself or set the record straight. It seems related, in most cases,
to hating America. I’m not certain whether this weird hero destruction goes on
in other countries as it does here.
But why would it be considered a “good” thing to hate your
country, and the iconic figures who helped make it? That seems cynical,
pseudo-intellectual, and just plain ugly.
Dinesh D’Souza has done a good job debunking some of this
anti-American fake history, with America—Imagine a World without Her and other
books and documentaries. I’ve also turned to a series of history books by
various authors: The Real Benjamin Franklin, and The Real Thomas Jefferson, for example.
Today is Columbus Day. I’ve written about Columbus a couple
of times (here and here). I believe the real historical record is in his favor.
This past weekend I heard the best debunking of the Columbus
maligning I’ve heard in some time. This was Michael Knowles, in his Daily Wire
podcast on Friday. You can get the audio here, or you can see it, with some extra visuals, by scrolling down to last Friday on his Facebook page.
Later I found much of that 20-minute segment written as an
article by Knowles. There’s extra humor in the podcast,
and I recommend that. But for now I’d like to share a few of his points. This
first is an example of what we truth seekers are up against.
The typical mainstream media anti-Columbus hit piece goes as
follows: cite a well- known passage from the Admiral’s diary out of context,
juxtapose it next to the testimony of his chief political rivals, and pretend
that all of this information has only recently been uncovered.
Vox’s Dylan Matthews follows this strategy with his outlet’s
typical sobriety in his 2015 article, “9 reasons Christopher Columbus was a
murderer, tyrant, and scoundrel.” Perhaps the worst charge Matthews alleges is
that “Settlers under Columbus sold 9- and 10-year-old girls into sexual
slavery.” Matthews asserts, “This one he admitted himself in a letter to Doña
Juana de la Torre, a friend of the Spanish queen: ‘There are plenty of dealers
who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand, and
for all ages a good price must be paid.’”
One might conclude from Vox’s article that Columbus devised
the plan or at least approved of it. But the opposite is true. Columbus doesn’t
brag about selling those girls into slavery or even defend the action. On the
contrary, in the very next sentence, Columbus writes, “I assert that the
violence of the calumny of turbulent persons has injured me more than my
services have profited me; which is a bad example for the present and for the
future. I take my oath that a number of men have gone to the Indies who did not
deserve water in the sight of God and of the world.”
There are attacks that quote Columbus’s contemporary rivals,
who maligned him at the time, and he spent energy refuting. Knowles makes this
comparison:
The report’s author is none other than Francisco Bobadilla,
Christopher Columbus’s chief political rival and the man who successfully
usurped power from him in the West Indies. A modern analog would be to say that
a document written by Walter Mondale proves Ronald Reagan was a terrible
president.
Columbus’s behavior, as testified by those who knew him and
saw how he acted, debunked those accusations then, and they should not be
picked up as pseudo-fact again in our day. Among the accusations are ways the natives
were treated.
Columbus spent years of his life refuting the document as a
vicious libel and turned down as a matter of principle lucrative agreements
with the Spanish crown that did not correct for history what he regarded as
calumny. This is not to say that Columbus is guiltless in the Spanish treatment
of natives. But the Left’s claims of Columbus’s special monstrosity are without
foundation. Even Bartolomé de Las Casas, the first resident Bishop of the
Americas and most vociferous defender of the indigenous islanders against
Spanish slavery and brutality admired Christopher Columbus to the end and
expressed as much in his History of the Indies.
Stanford professor emerita Carol Delaney marvels at the
ignorance. “They are blaming Columbus for the things he didn’t do,” she
explains. “It was mostly the people who came after, the settlers. I just think
he’s been terribly maligned.” Delaney points out that in the man’s own writings
and the writings of those who knew him, Columbus seems to be “very much on the
side of the Indians” and even adopted the son of an American Indian leader he
had befriended.
Columbus was devout, which may irk modern-day cynics. He
believed he was led by God, and reports several miraculous details that led him
forward fortuitously. And he believed he was sharing both Christianity and
civilization with poor people who lacked these sources of happiness. He was respectful
and gentle with the natives.
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| Columbus land in the New World Hulton Archive/Getty Images I found it here. |
Possibly he was not a strong enough leader as a colonial island
governor—for which there was no precedent—although he managed to overcome
multiple mutinies through sheer force of will during the original voyage. But
he was not a tyrant. In a letter to the Spanish crown, his Lettera Rarissima, he wrote these self-defending words:
“Let those who are fond of blaming and finding fault, while
they sit safely at home, ask, ‘Why did you not do thus and so?’ I wish they
were on this voyage; I well believe that another voyage of a different kind
awaits them, or our faith is naught.”
I like Knowles’s accusation against the ungrateful and
ignorant, who are willing to believe any word against an American hero, but
fail to consider the documentation we’ve had for centuries:
The modern left-wing revisionist sits comfortably in the
freest, most prosperous, most charitable country in the history of the world
and from a position of wholly unmerited luxury slanders the man who made it all
possible.
A few days ago I suggested asking the question, sincerely, “What makes you think that?” That’s a
good question to ask about Columbus. If you think he was an evil tyrant who
ruined the entire “New World,” what makes you think that? What are your
sources? Why do you believe those sources instead of more positive, historical
records?
And, if you weren’t being taught to believe that America is
evil, would you think that solely from your own experience and evidence?
As for me, I flew my American flag today, in celebration of
Christopher Columbus and his intrepid voyage that led to the eventual founding
of America.
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