> It's because some people think that the whole reason why Christopher Columbus sailed to this hemisphere was to kill off the American Indian population ("Native Americans!") by spreading smallpox and gonorrhea. The destruction of American Indian tribes by white man (through battle and disease) was all caused by Christopher Columbus. When we celebrate Columbus Day, we're celebrating genocide.
>
> According to some people.
>
> -Faux "College activists, mainly." Pas

Ah. This brings back the warm memories of my US History assignment from over the summer.

We were assigned to read and respond to the first chapter of "A Peoples' History of the United States." First the author argued that the Native American civilization was in every way more peaceful and superior to the European one. Sure they might have had the occasional bloody war and human sacrifice, but that doesn't erase their inherent innocence.

After that came the filling of the pages with detailed accounts of every nasty and stupid deed ever committed by Columbus (enslaving the Indians, being rotten enough to infect them with smallpox, not realizing he wasn't in India, cheating on his income taxes...).

It's all nice emotionalizing- and some of it's undoubtedly true- but, boy, does it make for painfully lousy history. I wasn't surprised to log on to Amazon.com and discover that this book has been embraced as the bible for historical revisionists and college people everywhere.

("College kids" sounds pretty cheeky coming from a sixteen-year-old, so I won't.)

And speaking of Columbus Day, I think that as long we're in the practice of renaming our holidays to make them more general and unoffensive (George Washiington Day and Abe Lincoln Day have become Presidents Day, Christmas and Hanukka and Kwanza are all now "The Holidays," etc.) how about we change Columbus Day to Explorers Day?

Therefore, instead of whinging about the evils of Columbus next time Oct. 8 roles around, people who don't like him can protest by supporting some other explorer instead. Lewis and Clark, Magellen, Neil Armstrong, those three guys who died trying to cross Australia on foot while dragging a Chinese gong behind them... why, the sheer possibilities are endless!

I think it's definitely something our government should look into.


M "Well, that was *remarkably* irrelevant." e "Oh, and all historical revionists aren't bad, either. Just the really silly ones are." l "Oh, and school assignments over the summer- especially the ones that are due *during* the summer- really, really stink."