Instapundit: Don't Defend Christopher Columbus, Celebrate Him
Instapundit: Cortez and the Liberation of Mexico
I am so tired of leftist propaganda and alternative history. Let's do a thought experiment. Was there any way that Eurasian diseases were not going to make it to the Americas in the 16th or 17th centuries? If the vector weren't via Europeans, it would have been through the Chinese or other peoples traveling across the Atlantic or Pacific. There was going to be contract and well before any people knew about germ theory of how diseases were spread.
When American Indians/Native Americans (the Canadian term "First Nations" makes more sense) traveled across the Beringia land bridge and wiped out the mega-fauna of North and South America, was that a crime against Gaia? Just asking.
When aboriginal tribes in the Americas engaged in warfare, slavery, cannibalism, and a host of other assaults on each other (before any Europeans showed up)--what do you call that? I am not a big fan of what Cortez did in Central America (while a brilliant military leader, allegations of cruelty are fairly assigned to him). Yet, how do you think Cortez was able to overthrow the Aztec Empire with just a few hundred men, weapons not that much more advanced than what the Aztecs had, and 16 horses? It was because all the neighboring tribes joined him in overthrowing the Aztecs because the Aztecs were blood thirsty tyrants.
Columbus was not the monster that Howard Zinn would have you believe. Zinn's alternative history is very dishonest and deceptive. Howard Zinn was a liar. Columbus had his flaws (like all people) but he was a heroic explorer and man ahead of his time.
Powerline: Columbus Day
Instapundit: Crazy Idea and Hello Columbus!
“The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was… The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” ~ Milan Kundera
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