Gents,
Please forgive EB for thinking that the world revolves around the US.
Not true Rumples. You know very well he thinks it revolves around Shatner.
As for Christopher Columbus, I believe that tomorrow in the US is the only observed holiday on the planet that celebrates the accomplishments of a mass murderer. Go figure.
Actually I was not so stunned to discover that Romanians celebrate Vlad Tepes, and Mongolians celebrate Genghis Khan. Human beings tend to color even monsters as heroes when it benefits their interests.
While Columbus has been badly, even perversely mislabeled for a very long time as a hero, his ability to convince Spain to back his expedition was the great spark of all that became later in the Western Hemisphere, whether accomplishment or disaster...and everything in between. He should be marked somehow, but is it possible to define him fairly with such hugely contrasting consequences.
im sure all the native Indians who remain will celebrate--
Good point.
The arrival of Europeans also initiated the decline of the Native Indians. Entire villages were wiped out by diseases such as measles, smallpox, cholera and pneumonia to which the Indians had no inbuilt immunity. Others, forced to leave their traditional hunting and farming lands found it difficult to re-establish themselves elsewhere and suffered malnutrition and death.
Not to diminish this epic tragedy, but we should remember the forming of nations has largely been the pushing out or destruction of one people by another all through time. I can't hardly think of a country today that was built entirely by it's own original people, especially without the forced control or elimination of competing peoples. Possibly Egypt? Japan? Maybe those with a very isolated geography. Even the reestablishment of Israel goes back to what was a conquest in ancient times, a product of extermination and expulsion...as God sanctioned of course.
This is not justification, just fact.
Bonne Jour de l'Action de grâce,
Merlot