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Monday, October 17, 2005

The glory of Christopher Columbus and the rise of Civilization

Stone age societies were not peaceful, tolerant or emotionally rich

by StFerdIII

In every real sense Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas. Maybe Irish monks, the Vikings or stray Breton fishing boats landed in the Eastern fringes of North America before Columbus. But they did not stay, did not start the revolution of the mind, spirit, commerce and technology, that the Europeans set into motion to colonize and civilize an entire Continent. Columbus discovered America because he was the spearhead of European civilization which turned a barren, stone age landscape into the thriving modern advanced nations of Canada and the United States. These two wealthy countries are also, and not accidentally, direct derivatives of the British Empire and British ingenuity.

But ignorance and politically correct inanity ignores the reality of the West’s civilizational mission in the America’s and focuses instead on the supposed ‘occupation’, ‘murder’, and ‘destruction’ of the indigenous stone age peoples that lived in pre-modern societies. The politically correct view is that Columbus did not discover America, because people had lived here for thousands of years. Columbus and by extension Western Civilization, is routinely vilified as a symbol of slavery and genocide. Critics, tree huggers, delusionists and sandal wearers all cry that Columbus initiated a holocaust. What piffle.

We instead need to celebrate the genius and courage of men like Columbus. The ‘discoverers’ and manly types such as Columbus brought America into the orbit and within the power of rational, scientific civilizations of Western Europe. The result, ultimately, has been the creation of the United States of America – history’s most powerful and transparently munificent state. The opening of America brought the ideas and achievements of Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and the thousands of thinkers, writers, and inventors who followed to a dreary, desolate and backwards Continent. Columbus and his progeny created the dynamic republic which has prospered, and enhanced mankind scientifically, intellectually, morally and ensured the safety of our blessed Western civilization.

But you will never hear a panegyric to Western Civilization or to Columbus and real men like him that changed forever our world. Can you imagine today’s effeminate sniveling and whining collection of men going forth and discovering, creating and building in the manner and with the attendant risks endured by a Columbus, da Gama, Magellan or Drake ? It is highly doubtful that our feminine creatures in the modern world would be so bold.

Prior to 1492, what is now North America was sparsely inhabited, unused, and undeveloped. The inhabitants were primarily hunter-gatherers, wandering across the land, living from hand-to-mouth and from day-to-day. There was virtually no change, no growth, no development and no innovation for thousands of years. With rare exception, life was ugly, nasty, brutish, and short: there was no wheel, no written language, no division of labor, little agriculture and scant permanent settlement; but there were endless and very bloody wars. Ripping out of hearts, human sacrifice, blood drinking, cannibalism and torture were common, not to mention the hunting to extinction of all large mammals. Yet this stone age society is now applauded by historical revisionists as being the epitome of mankind’s emotional and spiritual development. How completely insane.

The goal of many in our world – snotty academics, 20 something airheads, government workers, politicians, lobby groups, and the gay-feminist axist - is to denigrate the values of Western civilization and to glorify the primitivism, mysticism, and collectivism embodied in the tribal cultures of American Indians. According to the motley and absurdly ignorant collection of anti-Westerners, the primitive state of savagery in the pre-modern world is better than our carbon-industrialized society. Enthusiastic for such programs as global warming, destruction of corporations, various forms of socialist and communist wealth sharing, and destroying modern technology and progress, the modern nihilists also claim, wrongly, that all cultures as morally equal. Of course this is ridiculous.

It is rather obvious to someone who has strolled the streets of New York, Rio, Baghdad, Moscow, Shanghai, or Brazzaville, that some cultures are better than others. A free society is better than slavery; reason is better than brute force as a way to deal with other men; productivity is better than stagnation. In fact, Western civilization stands for man at his best. It stands for the values that make human life possible: reason, science, self-reliance, individualism, ambition, productive achievement. The values of Western civilization are values for all men; they cut across gender, ethnicity, and geography. We should honor Western civilization not for the ethnocentric reason that some of us happen to have European ancestors but because it is the objectively superior culture.

The current socialist-marxist fascination with moral relativity – whether stating that gays are just as good as heterosexuals, or that Islam is peaceful and just as wonderful as our Judeo-Christian society – is premised upon racism. The socialist-marxist and post modern fascination with moral relativity really means that they deny the right to self expression or individual thinking. In the socialist-post modern world it does not matter what you do or think, since in effect nothing is important – it is all relative. This means that your race or ethnicity is who and what you are. Western civilization is rejected and race inserted. Black, White, Chinese, Indian, African, Arab race theories are instituted in place of the values of civilization.

Thus we have the absurd spectacle of the modern socialists and tree hugging stone age moralizers telling us to preserve various ‘heritages’ as a rational life goal. Why ? What if the heritage has been a complete and utter failure? We are also told that we need more ‘multicultural education’ and festivals as an antidote to racism, even though it does the opposite and creates race based comparisons, ghettos of minorities and suspicion of Western culture.

Not all aspects of Western civilization are glorious. But that is true for the history of all people’s, all states, all empires, all races, all tribes and all individuals. We all have our good and bad characteristics. But to impose historical revisionism and cultural relativity onto our world and declare that the stone-age man was a superior creation to the modern European birthed citizen is an exercise in crass stupidity and immorality.

We need to glorify, improve and teach others about our civilization - not destroy it.