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Should we abolish Columbus Day?

Abolish Columbus Day, replace it with Bartolomé Day?


  • Total voters
    73
This one was bad and I admit it..
I was trying to reinforce your position with Science and went off..Sorry..
I did much better in posts 40, 43, 46..
Science is my whole working life and my passion.
Sorry but your posts are not easy to interpret. A lot of times they just don't make any sense. It's not my fault, and obviously I'm not the only one who has a difficult time deciphering your posts, and honestly if you're going to get a tude about it, then it's just not worth my time to even try.
 
I mean... Damn. You think modern Africa and the Middle East are bad?

I don't even want to think about the kind of shenanigans we might be looking at if the Aztecs had hung around long enough to get ahold of machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. :lol:

Hopefully, they would be modernized people and not living in the past.
 
"Their removal was an improvement."? That is a sick perception of history.... "Celebrating the arrival of Western 'civilization'.". That's a laugh... Old Chris was Italion--Italions consider this their own personal holiday...It should be abolished....

Um...yes? I can lament how the Mesoamericans were treated after the conquest without mourning the destruction of the Aztec Empire. Columbus Day is foremost a national holiday, it is also a holiday that Italian-Americans celebrate as part of their cultural heritage. The first mass 'remembrance' of Columbus was in 1792 the 300th anniversary after his landing to honor the arrival of Western civilization into the Americas.
 
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He sailed for the Queen of Spain, but he was from Italy...

Well, that's debatable if you google it.

Why did you spell it "Italion" though?
 
Contention about the discoveries in the Modern Times??
The data gathered in the 1500s..Either moons go around Jupiter or they don't//
You know where Galileo ended up..and Newton threw away his masterpiece on Calculus..
Today he could just have used a zip drive..Imagine..
Imagine where we would be without glasses, with lenses and their many critical discoveries in the 1700s, which I like to call the century of Biology.
How is that "real history"? We call that history of science or history of technology, and that's just as contentious of a field as any.
 
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Hopefully, they would be modernized people and not living in the past.

Here's hoping. :shrug:

Like I said though, it hasn't worked out so well for a lot of other more "primitive" cultures around the world that managed to get ahold of Western technology without also picking up Western values.

Take the Saudis, for instance. At the heart of the matter, they're really nothing more than bloodthirsty nomads. They simply happen to have won the geographic lottery in that the desert they're living in holds most of the world's oil.

This reality shows through in their laws and civil behavior even in spite of all the glitz and glamor they surround themselves with.
 
Where exactly? :roll:

For that matter, it's not like the natives were entirely innocent in all of this either. Europeans may have committed more than their share of atrocities, but most of the native cultures weren't much better.

Honestly, we should probably count it as blessing that the Aztecs and their ilk were done away with.



How would you react if your homeland was attacked, conquered, your women and children slaughtered, etc, etc......I am more concerned with this country than I am about South American countries... The Aztecs would have evolved in time.....or would have gone through revolution....
 
How would you react if your homeland was attacked, conquered, your women and children slaughtered, etc, etc......I am more concerned with this country than I am about South American countries... The Aztecs would have evolved in time.....or would have gone through revolution....

That is certainly not necessarily so.
 
Contention about the discoveries in the Modern Times??
The data gathered in the 1500s..Either moons go around Jupiter or they don't//
You know where Galileo ended up..and Newton threw away his masterpiece on Calculus..
Today he could just have used a zip drive..Imagine..
Imagine where we would be without glasses, with lenses and their many critical discoveries in the 1700s, which I like to call the century of Biology.

That's not what I was talking about. Furthermore, I don't know about you, but my experience with Zip drives was bloody horrible. I am glad it was a dead technology.

zip.jpg
 
How would you react if your homeland was attacked, conquered, your women and children slaughtered, etc, etc......I am more concerned with this country than I am about South American countries...

It has nothing to do with how they "reacted" to European contact. They acted in a generally brutal and bloodthirsty manner amongst themselves before we even arrived.

The Aztecs were just as avid "imperialists" as any European power, and they were far less gracious conquerors to boot.

Honestly, I almost look at their defeat and subjugation at the hands of Cortez as being indicative of a certain degree of Karma. lol

The Aztecs would have evolved in time.....or would have gone through revolution....

I highly doubt it. They hadn't even managed to master basic iron working or the wheel yet, and their entire culture was basically founded on the ideals of conquest, human sacrifice, and brutality.

The idea that they could've turned themselves around enough to be able to compete with European culture on any meaningful technological or philosophical basis in a mere five hundred years is pretty far fetched to say the least.
 
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Yea... No. The last thing any country needs is holiday devoted more or less exclusively to wallowing in pitiful self-loathing over crimes that no one alive today played any role in whatsoever.

Europeans are here, and they're here to stay. While I might suggest not centering it around someone like Columbus, I don't see anything wrong with the idea of a holiday commemorating the event which lead to this state of affairs.

History is often a messy business. There isn't a culture in existence without at least a few skeletons in its closet.

What's the point in crying over split milk? :shrug:


See any difference between crying over spilt milk and ceasing celebration of spilt milk?

We could celebrate anything. E.g., the people who came here fleeing a tyrant, not a guy that brought tyranny to those who were here first.
 
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Zip drive is my term for the latest 'thumb drive', sorry..
Boody horrible huh..My British Mother still uses those kinds of expressions..
Our family is eternally thankful for the USA taking care of her, now in a great assisted living..
Noticed some articles from your way..
Terrible tragedy in Western S. Dakota with whole herds dying in the Blizzard..
Shutdown slows Keystone study, which BHO is resigned to..
Broken pipeline spills 20,000 barrels into a ND wheat field..
It's hard for me not to see Science, though I love politics also.
That's not what I was talking about. Furthermore, I don't know about you, but my experience with Zip drives was bloody horrible. I am glad it was a dead technology.

zip.jpg
 
See any difference between crying over spilt milk and ceasing celebration of spilt milk?

We could celebrate anything. E.g., the people who came here fleeing a tyrant, not a guy that was a tyrant.

As I said, I would be gladly willing to move the focus of the day away from Columbus. I simply don't believe that a complete 180 should be pulled on the concept with something so silly as a "Native American" day.

It simply wouldn't serve any real purpose. In no way would it actually "appease" Native Americans, and it would simply serve to make those of European descent ashamed of their own heritage.

The very idea is frankly patronizing, to be honest.

"Hey, I know we conquered you and all, but we gave you a holiday that only our own people really care about to make up for it. We cool?"

I'm sorry, but it doesn't really work that way. :lol:
 
As I said, I would be gladly willing to move the focus of the day away from Columbus. I simply don't believe that a complete 180 should be pulled on the concept with something so silly as a "Native American" day.

It simply wouldn't serve any real purpose. In no way would it actually "appease" Native Americans, and it would simply serve to make those of European descent ashamed of their own heritage.

The very idea is frankly patronizing, to be honest.

"Hey, I know we conquered you, but we gave you a holiday that only our own people really care about to make up for it. We cool?"

I'm sorry, but it doesn't really work that way. :lol:

I sympathize but I'd rather take a 'if it isn't broke' attitude. Almost everyone in the country can name Columbus Day and recite what it's about. Why tamper with that by changing the name?
 
That is certainly not necessarily so.



What is not necessarily so? That they would have evolved or their people revolted? Well of course that is not what happened, so it is conjecture....
 
I sympathize but I'd rather take a 'if it isn't broke' attitude. Almost everyone in the country can name Columbus Day and recite what it's about. Why tamper with that by changing the name?

Which is frankly a fair point in and of itself. So long as people are educated as to the man's failings, what does it matter what the holiday is called? :shrug:

The name will eventually be changed anyway if public awareness of Columbus' ill-founded character becomes wide spread enough.
 
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What is not necessarily so? That they would have evolved or their people revolted? Well of course that is not what happened, so it is conjecture....

Maybe they would have become a flourishing beacon of civilization and liberalism. But when the Spanish arrived they were eating people. Color me skeptical. I'm glad the Aztecs are gone.
 
My favorite part is:

"Some ignorant, white man from Bumretch Nebrahoma"

Using bigotry to sell this narrative is deliciously ironic.
 
I sympathize but I'd rather take a 'if it isn't broke' attitude. Almost everyone in the country can name Columbus Day and recite what it's about. Why tamper with that by changing the name?
Because we shouldn't be celebrating mass murder, slavery, and sex trafficking. It's like celebrating "Hitler Day", and saying that's it fine, as long as we teach children to be holocaust deniers. It's broken, we should fix it.
Maybe they would have become a flourishing beacon of civilization and liberalism. But when the Spanish arrived they were eating people. Color me skeptical. I'm glad the Aztecs are gone.
By the time the Spanish had got there, the Aztecs were at a relative peace within themselves and their neighbors. They still had fights and "wars", but these were mostly ceremonial, for the sole purpose of appeasing their gods (on both sides). Even if you combine all the various ways the Aztecs were killing each other, it pales in comparison to both the death rate in Europe, and the death rate in America once the Spanish started their war. It's also a bit of a myth, that the Aztecs were cannibals; they did eat small amounts of human flesh, but solely as a religious ritual. Even that had mostly fallen out of style by the time the Spanish arrived; only a small minority of Aztecs were still practicing the full ritual, and even then it was still not about "eating each other".
 
Which is frankly a fair point in and of itself. So long as people are educated as to the man's failings, what does it matter what the holiday is called? :shrug:

The name will eventually be changed anyway if public awareness of Columbus' ill-founded character becomes wide spread enough.

Not entirely likely. We have been disillusioned with Thomas Jefferson for about 60 years now, and about 30-40 for the public. Jefferson's public icon image is still going strong, regardless.

That being said, I have no problems with creating a national holiday to celebrate Native American culture. The truth of the matter is, MLK Day doesn't somehow intellectually cause a problem for Americans that also celebrate the 4th of July. This is despite the implication that most of those individuals did not conceptualize their message of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for African Americans. The public incorporates both holidays without contradiction, either consciously or out of ignorance. Regardless of that, it builds nationalism, and I am all for limited myth making in the pursuit of national unity.
 
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