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Should we abolish Columbus Day?

Abolish Columbus Day, replace it with Bartolomé Day?

  • Total voters
    73
Gathomas88 said:
Better technology, better standards of living, and less violence all seem pretty "objective" to me. :shrug:
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Better standards of living by YOUR values.

You make an assumption about how "every" European and Native American saw their own standard of living.

Again from your subjective point of you try to objectively view another.
 
Gathomas88 said:
Better technology, better standards of living, and less violence all seem pretty "objective" to me. :shrug:
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Are you implying that Native American's were more violent and had a worse standard of living than did the Europeans?
 
year2late said:
Better standards of living by YOUR values.

You make an assumption about how "every" European and Native American saw their own standard of living.

Again from your subjective point of you try to objectively view another.
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Europeans were still in the Dark Ages when Columbus came West.

The Natives used to consider the Europeans as dirty savages... ironic.
 
Bodhisattva said:
Columbus had nothing to do with America being established... that would be the English and French.
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Oy Vey!
Did you not understand the wording "lead to".
 
Excon said:
Oy Vey!
Did you not understand the wording "lead to".
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Cortez had more to do with the US being established than Columbus.

Columbus had as much to do with the foundation of the United States as did Marco Polo.

My relatives came over on the Mayflower... they are the ones that lead to the establishment of the good ole' US of A.
 
Bodhisattva said:
Cortez had more to do with the US being established than Columbus.

Columbus had as much to do with the foundation of the United States as did Marco Polo.

My relatives came over on the Mayflower... they are the ones that lead to the establishment of the good ole' US of A.
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And that voyage may never had happened in the same time frame was it not for Columbus.
His discovery lead to this Country being established. End of story.
 
Excon said:
And that voyage may never had happened in the same time frame was it not for Columbus.
His discovery lead to this Country being established. End of story.
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Didn't that bumbling idiot think he was in India and THAT is why he called the native people "indians?" I think so IIRC. So not only was a mass murdering maniac but he was also a dumbass with an incompetent crew.
 
Excon said:
And that voyage may never had happened in the same time frame was it not for Columbus.
His discovery lead to this Country being established. End of story.
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Nope. It was Ptolemy who miscalculated the circumference of the Earth... making it too small. Columbus used this miscalculation in an attempt to sail West to Asia. It was Ptolemy who lead to the USA being established. Keep trying though...
 
ChrisL said:
Didn't that bumbling idiot think he was in India and THAT is why he called the native people "indians?" I think so IIRC. So not only was a mass murdering maniac but he was also a dumbass with an incompetent crew.
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He died thinking that he had discovered lands close to India and never realized that he landed on a new continent. 20 years and he never realized his mistake. :lol:
 
Bodhisattva said:
Nope. It was Ptolemy who miscalculated the circumference of the Earth... making it too small. Columbus used this miscalculation in an attempt to sail West to Asia. It was Ptolemy who lead to the USA being established. Keep trying though...
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Yes, Columbus' discovery was accidental, and he thought he was in "Indies." My mistake, I thought it was India.

Christopher Columbus, of course, thought he had arrived in the “Indies,” the medieval name for Asia. Using Marco Polo's Travels among other sources, Columbus calculated that his voyage would lead him to Cathay (China), Cipango (Japan), the Spice Islands (the Mollucas), and India.

A Slow Boat to China

After landing on a small island on Oct. 12, 1492, in what he believed were the Indies, Columbus sailed along the coast of Cuba, certain that he had finally reached the continent of Cathay. He searched in vain for the magnificent cities Marco Polo had described, hoping to deliver a letter from the Spanish monarchs to “the great Khan,” the Chinese emperor. “Afterwards,” Columbus wrote on Oct. 21, “I shall set sail for another very large island which I believe to be Cipango, according to the indications I receive from the Indians on board.” Columbus's Japan proved to be the island of Hispaniola.

Refusing to Ask for Directions

Three voyages later, Columbus still resolutely maintained that he had reached Asia despite growing contrary evidence. Amerigo Vespucci's 150l voyage along the coast of South America convinced most explorers and their patrons that a huge unexplored continent existed across the Atlantic—what Vespucci called Mundus Novus, the New World. Columbus, however, died in 1506 still insisting that he had found a new route to Asia.
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Bodhisattva said:
Are you implying that Native American's were more violent and had a worse standard of living than did the Europeans?
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They were in the habit of sacrificing one another to the gods by the thousands. Seems rather violent to me.

Living standard strikes me as being something that would probably be hard to measure, given how many of these cultures went extinct before they could really be studied in that regard.
 
ChrisL said:
Didn't that bumbling idiot think he was in India and THAT is why he called the native people "indians?" I think so IIRC. So not only was a mass murdering maniac but he was also a dumbass with an incompetent crew.
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That has no bearing on the fact of his discovery and what it lead to.
 
Excon said:
That has no bearing on the fact of his discovery and what it lead to.
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It led to us all knowing what a dummy and cold-blooded mass murdering jerk he was.
 
ChrisL said:
It led to us all knowing what a dummy and cold-blooded mass murdering jerk he was.
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One; It in no way makes him a dummy.

Two: Murder is the unlawful killing. Were his killings unlawful? What was that? They weren't? Go figure.

Three: I prefer to judge the man by the period in which he lived. Not by today's standards.
 
Gathomas88 said:
They were in the habit of sacrificing one another to the gods by the thousands. Seems rather violent to me.
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And our cultures that had the Inquisition and many religious wars of murder, rape and torture are better?

Living standard strikes me as being something that would probably be hard to measure, given how many of these cultures went extinct before they could really be studied in that regard.
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Then we probably shouldn't indicate that we had a better standard of living...
 
Excon said:
One; It in no way makes him a dummy.

Two: Murder is the unlawful killing. Were his killings unlawful? What was that? They weren't? Go figure.

Three: I prefer to judge the man by the period in which he lived. Not by today's standards.
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Yes it was murder. Didn't you read the OP? There were two you know.
 
Bodhisattva said:
And our cultures that had the Inquisition and many religious wars of murder, rape and torture are better?
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First off, the Inquisition can only be confirmed to have executed around 3000 people at most in almost 200 years of operation. Many of those executions were also in "effigie" only, meaning that no actual person was killed.

Secondly, the Native Americans had just as many brutal wars as we Europeans ever did, with hundreds of thousands of human sacrifices tossed on top.

I'm sorry, but the simple fact of the matter is that the overall balance is in Europe's favor here.

Then we probably shouldn't indicate that we had a better standard of living...
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The technology and medical knowledge the West brought with them to the Americas has resulted in higher standards of living than the native cultures ever would've been able to provide for themselves within the same time frame.
 
Excon said:
One; It in no way makes him a dummy.

Two: Murder is the unlawful killing. Were his killings unlawful? What was that? They weren't? Go figure.

Three: I prefer to judge the man by the period in which he lived. Not by today's standards.
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The Spanish pretty clearly thought Columbus' killings were "unlawful." Why else would they have him imprisoned?
 
Bodhisattva said:
He died thinking that he had discovered lands close to India and never realized that he landed on a new continent. 20 years and he never realized his mistake. :lol:
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Maybe he was just in denial because it was such a HUGE mistake. :)
 
Excon said:
One; It in no way makes him a dummy.

Two: Murder is the unlawful killing. Were his killings unlawful? What was that? They weren't? Go figure.

Three: I prefer to judge the man by the period in which he lived. Not by today's standards.
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I guess by ignoring it you are tacitly agreeing that you were wrong about who lead to the discovery of the America's. :lol:

Three: His contemporaries called him a criminal. He tortured Europeans and natives alike. Out of an estimated 3 million natives only 50,000 survived. He tortured and killed people for small crimes and even for slights to the family. The time period he lived in? In that time period he was removed from office and charged with offence.

Two: Killing the untold thousands that he did through the slave trade, torture and slaughter isn't murder because they didn't have that law yet. Don't try to be cute.
 
Gathomas88 said:
First off, the Inquisition can only be confirmed to have executed around 3000 people at most in almost 200 years of operation. Many of those executions were also in "effigie" only, meaning that no actual person was killed.

Secondly, the Native Americans had just as many brutal wars as we Europeans ever did, with hundreds of thousands of human sacrifices tossed on top.

I'm sorry, but the simple fact of the matter is that the overall balance is in Europe's favor here.
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Our cultures also brought us the Holocaust and both Mao and Stalins purges bringing that total to around 120 million dead. Does that work better? :roll:

The technology and medical knowledge the West brought with them to the Americas has resulted in higher standards of living than the native cultures ever would've been able to provide for themselves within the same time frame.
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The biggest factor to standard of living is happiness. It includes the level of wealth, comfort, material goods and necessities available. That is a subjective list. There is no way to quantify the standard of living and our Western medical knowledge at the time was horrid. Crystals or blood letting to cure a fever? Horse****. The natives used herbs and natural remedies. I am not saying they were advanced but making some argument about our technology and medical knowldge is ridiculous.
 
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