Columbus Day Trippers

"When people say to me, as they very naturally will and do and probably should, "Why is this important for us to know in the [present] year?", that isn't the way I look at it. I think it's important to know for itself. Not because it's going to help us better understand [the events of today], or have a greater equilibrium in a time of trouble. It will do that, absolutely it does that. But it's the same as justifying why should I read Moby Dick or The Great Gatsby [today]. It's the same reason you should have read it in 1989. It is of value, it is of interest unto itself. It's an extension, an enlargement of the experience of being alive. That's what history is. And I don't think anyone ought to be, or really wants to be, provincial in time, any more than one would want to stay locked in the same place in the map all one's life."--Historian David McCollough

"Just one more thing: I think we're next, Patrick."

From last Columbus Day, Mark Steyn: From Barbarous to Evil

"I woke up to the news that, during the night, in Baltimore, Maryland, the oldest monument to Christopher Columbus in the United States had been destroyed by someone called "Ty" and his chum:

A 225-year-old monument commemorating Christopher Columbus was vandalized early Monday amid the nationwide debate on removing Confederate statues and monuments.
A video posted on Monday shows the monument being smashed. It shows two unidentified people taping a sign reading "The future is racial and economic justice" on the monument. One of them then hits the monument with what appears to be a sledgehammer while the other stands next to the monument holding a sign that reads "Racism: Tear it down."
"Christopher Columbus symbolizes the initial invasion of European capitalism into the Western Hemisphere. Columbus initiated a centuries-old wave of terrorism, murder, genocide, rape, slavery, ecological degradation and capitalist exploitation of labor in the Americas," the video's narrator, who identifies himself as "Ty," says.

As you can see at right, almost every word painstakingly engraved on that obelisk has been obliterated. It stood for 225 years, and it was destroyed in the blink of an eye. Julia Manchester, The Hill's reporter, continues:

This comes amid a heated debate across the country over removing Confederate monuments...

That's one way of putting it, but not an honest one. Mark Steyn Club member David Elstrom left a comment here that deserves to be more widely distributed:

Mark,
I notice that the left media and even Fox News talk about the "discussion" on statues, or opine on the "conversation" concerning public monuments.
This Newspeak is apparently supposed to con the plebes into thinking something civil or democratic is happening. All I've seen is politicians or other apparatchiks rushing to remove statues (fearing the wrath of the mob) or actual mobs tearing things down.
If this is discussion, or conversation, then rape must be a "social event," and sticking up the local convenience store a "financial transaction."

Indeed. It's hard to have a "conversation" with a guy wielding a sledgehammer.".......

Moonbattery: The Unpersoning of Christopher Columbus Continues; "The ultimate villain is not Robert E. Lee, who merely defended his Virginia homeland, but Christopher Columbus, whose crime was to allow Western Civilization to expand into the New World. If no one had achieved what Columbus did, North America would still be populated by half-starved Stone Age savages and the hated United States would not exist. Consequently, La-La Land is the latest city to proclaim that Columbus Day will henceforth be fundamentally transformed into Indigenous Peoples Day... Although Italian Americans seem to be the only ones who put up a fight against the campaign to unperson Christopher Columbus, he represents all Americans of European heritage, or who appreciate living in a civilized country where life isn’t as nasty, brutish, and short as it was for pre-Columbian Indians. ... There is no aspect of American or Western Culture that these malefactors will not desecrate, demonized, and destroy. Progressives are doing to America what Muslims did to the rich and varied, mainly Christian cultures that once flourished across the Middle East. Everything that we fail to defend will be lost, starting with our pride.".......

Arriving at Watling Island, Bahamas, Oct. 12, 1492

The Left has always been fond of the Soviet Airbrush, and the Reading of History as one long indictment of the West is generations old now. But it seems like they're now declaring war on the very concept of history itself.

Statue-smashers consider themselves to be the very pinnacle of enlightenment, yet they are more brutish and superstitious than Og the Caveman. At least Og knew that he didn't fall out of his father's uterus a fully-formed, sui generis moral god. They live in a world built on the shoulders of Christopher Columbus, flaws and all, yet are too stupid and arrogant to know it.

And for the record, slavery was practiced by the American Indians and Aztecs long before Columbus came. Indeed, slavery was practiced almost everywhere, by almost everybody, almost always. It's in all the history books these idiots don't read.

At one point, Columbus was imprisoned by Queen Isabella, and remarkably, he's still in trouble with the authorities today. Comrade di Blasio wants to shutter or rename his landmarks--which is understandable for a guy who renamed himself from "Wilhelm" to sound less Germanic. 

Columbus made four trips to the New World, the last one probably the most dangerous. He arrived just ahead of a hurricane, but was refused dockage. The experienced Admiral tried to warn the local Governor, but was ignored. The Governor dispatched a fleet of treasure ships to Spain and they were promptly sunk. 

Columbus went on to Panama and faced marooning and mutinies. He was the first Westerner to sight the South American coast, but mistook it for an island.

He named the Virgin Islands after St. Ursula and her legendary 11,000 Virgins, who gave their lives for the faith.

"I found it (the world) was not round...but pear shaped, round where it has a nipple, for there it is taller, or as if one had a round ball and, on one side, it should be like a woman's breast, and this nipple part is the highest and closest to Heaven."--Christopher Columbus, Log of his Third Voyage (1498). 

Columbus thought thought these islands resembled the virgins' breasts:

I see it, I see it now!

Sail on, Admiral. Sail on through history, sir.

Columbus versus Islamic tyranny-1492 UPDATE: "Your Highnesses, as good Christian and Catholic princes, devout and propagators of the Christian faith, as well as enemies of the sect of Mahomet and of all idolatries and heresies, conceived the plan of sending me, Christopher Columbus, to this country of the Indies, there to see the princes, the peoples, the territory, their disposition and all things else, and the way in which one might proceed to convert these regions to our holy faith. And Your Highnesses have ordered that I should go, not by land, towards the East, which is the accustomed route, but by the way of the West, whereby hitherto nobody to our knowledge has ever been."