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How should Christopher Columbus be judged?

How should Christopher Columbus be judged?

  • He should be judged strictly by today's standards and mores.

    Votes: 5 9.6%
  • Somewhere in the middle. (Please elaborate)

    Votes: 9 17.3%
  • He should be judged by the standards and more of the time in which he lived.

    Votes: 30 57.7%
  • Other

    Votes: 8 15.4%

  • Total voters
    52
BS, he found the Americas completely by accident!
Is that a fair point, or a biased criticism? In other words, was it common knowledge that the Americas existed where they are? If not, then pretty much anybody would have discovered them "by accident". That's kind of what 'discovering' is... finding something you didn't know was there. If Columbus finding the Americas was an accident, then the discovery/finding of penicillin was no less an accident. Hardly a valid criticism.
 
That is a point of debate. For instance, your attempts to create a dichotomy between what you determine as the Left's history and "more honest" version, create a rather unnecessary and contentious border between accuracy and viewpoint.



While this question is written with some sort of rhetoric behind it, the notion that his relationship with Sally held no relationship with his overall philosophy and political philosophy is beyond ludicrous. Philosophically, you have a free man engaging in the trafficking and maintenance of an institution which strips what Jefferson viewed as the natural liberty of man. Politically, you have to remember that the man in question had been instructed to create a rhetorical basis for the colonies' separation from England. Within that document's initial draft (constructed by Jefferson) were references to slavery (before being removed for equally obvious reasons). The U.S. government had during his time had to figure out what to do about various aspects around slavery, including but not exhausting: whether or not slaves could count toward a state's representation, whether or not the U.S. government could institute a ban on participating in the international slave trade, whether the nation's capital could likewise exercise control over whether or not it could engage in slavery enterprises, and especially, whether slavery itself should even legally exist. As Jefferson was morally repulsed by slavery, yet seemingly bound to it as a slave owner with an insatiable appetite for luxury and debt, any resulting relationship between he and a female slave would draw an immense number of philosophical and political questions. At the heart of Jefferson was paradox and contradiction, and his relationship with Sally Hemings was a good illustration of that complexity.

Judgments on Jefferson's relative treatment of slaves likewise needs to have an incredible number of qualifications. First, although he tried to not have management which resembled what slaves like Booker T. Washington or Frederick Douglass observed, he nevertheless engaged in that activity from time to time when he felt compelled to do so. Secondly, we have to keep in mind that while many overseers engaged in overwhelmingly deliberate sadistic behavior toward slaves, the institution of slavery still necessarily involves crushing human liberty, by refusing autonomy, threatening violence or death for non-compliance to being legal non-humans. Jefferson was no exception in this regard.

Observing these structures, readily pointed out by his own contemporaries (especially blacks), does not mean we are engaging in a less honest version of history. Even if his contemporaries did not recognize all of the inner-workings of the institution of slavery, pointing them out likewise does not mean we are engaging in a less honest version of the past. It often means we are coming to a greater understanding of its workings, even if as a result, scholars need to have internal debates as to whether we need to alter perception. Historians debate these questions endlessly, and at times the pendulum swings one direction to the other in even the most minute aspects of a given subject.

I did probably introduce an unnecessary sociopolitical element to the debate by accusing the left of using selective history to demonize historical heroic figures, but I have not seen those on the right doing that. You will see on this thread those who declare Columbus a terrible person and unworthy of any commendation because he did some bad things. The right is more likely to err in the opposite direction by omitting the less commendable in order to create historical heroes.

In my opinion, honest history accepts that all people will be a mix of noble and less noble, some good, some bad, and everything in between and allows them to be who and what they are within their own times and culture. Jefferson was definitely a product of his times and culture as were all the early presidents. Of the first 18 President of the USA, twelve of them owned slaves at some time in their lives and eight owned slaves while they served as President. The last U.S. President to have been a former slave owner was Ulysses S. Grant. That does not take away from Jefferson's accomplishments as statesman, author of founding documents, diplomat, POTUS any more than it takes away from any of the other Presidents. Jefferson himself, as POTUS, worked tirelessly to end or at least limit slavery as is well documented in the research of the Monticello Society here: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery « Thomas Jefferson

Honest history allows a Thomas Jefferson or a Christopher Columbus or anybody else acknowledgments of their accomplishments and contributions to society and does not diminish or negate those because they were not perfect people.
 
But are you judging him from the viewpoint of european settlers or by the native americans of the time.

European settlers. He was European and his actions as they relate to how we judge Columbus the man must be judged by the morality he lived under. That would
be European.
 
Let's not act like everyone from that time believed raping, murdering, enslaving, and pillaging people who were different from oneself wasn't wrong. There WERE people back then who opposed such actions just as there were abolitionists throughout the entire history of slavery in America. Was there something supernatural about those people? Of course not. So no, people like Columbus don't get a pass because of the year in which they lived. People back then were capable of knowing better, and many did.
 
How should Christopher Columbus be judged?

Being that day is Columbus Day, I read something this morning that included something to the effect of, "If judged by today's standards...", then went off to detail all his atrocities, and so on.

Is that fair? Should he be judged by today's standards and mores, or should he be judged according to the era in which he lived?

Note: This question is NOT about whether or not he should have a holiday named after him.



The guy's been dead for about 500 years so it's kind of late to start thinking about digging him up and putting him on trial.

I will say one thing: you'll never see me at a Columbus Day parade and I do love pizza and pasta.
 
He should be judged by the standards of his time.If we start demonizing people, removing holidays, renaming schools, and so on because of what we didn't like about that person then most of the people on our money would be gone, so would our holidays and
we would not learn about any of the contributions they made
.



I'd rather learn about all of the terrible things that they did and the good things that they could have done, but didn't do.
 
You know... It's actually kind of funny.

Columbus was a monster by just about any metric you want to go off. In spite of that, he has been played up as some kind of hero.

Cortez, on the other hand, was actually a fairly reasonable guy by all accounts. Yet, the way he's usually portrayed these days, you'd be forgiven for mistaking him for Attila the Hun.

What the Hell gives?
:lol:



Columbus has a lot of people giving his story a lot of positive spin.
 
No, he should not. He should be judged by the standards, the norms and in the context of his times. In that context he was a brave man who led 3 ships west to discover America for the Europeans. Until his voyage, sailing off the end of the world was a fear. He went into the unknown. For that he should be given credit.
Whether he was a good or bad man by today's standard is irrelevant.



It wasn't irrelevant to the many thousands of Native Americans who died because of him.
 
From what it seems, the dude was a pretty bad dude, even for his time, sooooooooooooo I think he should be judged appropriately.
 
He should be judged as someone that is no longer alive today...and has been dead for centuries. IE:
Not worth judging when there are more important things to consider.




I agree. there are people alive right now in Syria and Iraq who are doing things just as bad as Columbus did.

We need to focus on those people.
 
I think the public handles honest history quite well. But many of us don't handle quite so well the politically correct version that rewrites history in a way the left wants it to be seen instead of the more honest version of the way it was. Why is Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings pertinent to his political views or his general philosophy or his tenure as POTUS for instance? One has nothing to do with the other. They are separate stories and we don't really know what relationship existed between Jefferson and Hemings though it was widely believed to be a consensual loving relationship and
there is no evidence that Jefferson was a cruel or harsh slave master.
There is plenty of evidence that he was philosophically opposed to slavery and very much opposed it spreading beyond the slave states in which it existed. The Monticello society that maintains the Jefferson family property and the Jeffersonian histories has done exhaustive research on Jefferson's relationship with Hemings but admits there is really little known.

The point to this being, of course, that such history can be distorted and used to discredit historical figures so that the leftist doctrines are more easily established in modern times. Or they can be portrayed honestly and as a matter of interest and in their proper context and importance.



Jefferson had escaped slaves captured and lashed, he was a brutal man.
 
Not sure why any of columbus' faults must be taught. Nobody ever taught me however instill learned of it. Teach kids the basics of what his significance is and let self discovery occur from there.

This attempt to demonize historical figures
by the left is another example of an insurgency in this country that truly wants to see its downfall



No one has to demonize Columbus, if the truth is told about this man it's obvious that he was a living demon.
 
People should never be judged by a generations standards they did not live. It doesn't make sense. Columbus should be judged by the standards of the world he lived in.

Of course. But lefties do it routinely. Never understood why.
 
As a murdering ****. Even in his time, his actions were found reprehensible by even the Spanish Crown later on. Though he did mostly get a slap on the wrist.

History is full of men that did terrible and great things and were larger than life after their deaths or sometimes during their lives. Columbus isn't all that great at much other than his voyage changed human history, which is more a matter of getting there first than doing anything genuinely productive afterwards.

It's not something I give much thought to and I find people that feel the need to bring it up every goddamn Columbus day to make themselves seem smarter and historically....adept are just bloody annoying. There's worse men in history and you don't see people faulting Mongolia for its' huge statue of Genghis Khan, and Columbus was a mere pup compared to him -- both selective reading and selective memory are an art form. I saw some dumb Salon headline calling North America a crime scene while recollecting Columbus' crimes, the whole damn crime world is a crime scene, just a basic understanding shows that the only unique about the tragedies of the Americas is that it took place on the other side of the ocean in the North and South American continents.

If it's worth anything, I wouldn't care if Columbus Day were replaced with something more....wholesome as I said on another thread about everyone's favorite explorer.

It's all of little importance to me in the long run though.

On a lighter note.....
 
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