Monday, October 11, 2004

CELEBRATE COLUMBUS DAY

How will you celebrate Columbus Day? How about paying a visit to one of the monuments of Christopher Columbus? Please be careful and stay away from the trouble makers... I hope that the organizer (Sons of Italy-New Generation) of the Columbus parade in Denver has the same intellectual ammunition as the Sons of Italy Book Club (look at the first book selection). It would be interesting to see the replica of Christopher Columbus' flagship, Santa Maria, in Columbus, Ohio. It would have been great to attend Thomas Bowden's lecture, Columbus Day Without Guilt. I hope that my readers in New York City will have a great walk on the Fifth Avenue.

I recommend you to read The Enemies of Christopher Columbus by Thomas A. Bowden. Here is an excerpt from Thomas Bowden's article, Columbus Day: The Cure for 9/11:

On one level, Columbus Day honors the explorer himself, for his many virtues. Columbus was a man of independent mind, who steadfastly pursued his bold plan for a westward voyage to the Indies despite powerful opposition--a man of courage, who set sail upon a trackless ocean with no assurance that he would ever reach land--a man of pride, who sought recognition and reward for his achievements.

We need not evade or excuse Columbus's flaws--his religious zealotry, his enslavement and oppression of natives--to recognize that he made history by finding new territory for a civilization that would soon show mankind how to overcome forever the age-old scourges of slavery, war, and forced religious conversion.

On a deeper level, therefore, Columbus Day celebrates the rational core of Western civilization, which flourished in the New World like a potbound plant liberated from its confining shell, demonstrating to the world what greatness is possible to man at his best. (Capitalism Magazine, 10/05/04.)

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