Today is Christopher Columbus Day, a federal holiday in which America celebrates the discoverer of this great land. Unfortunately, it is also a day that the Regressive Left seeks to destroy and remove from our culture based upon deliberately falsified historical narratives.
You doubtless have heard the agitprop: Columbus was a rapist and a pillager while Native Americans sat around smoking peace pipes and communing with the Great Spirit in the sky. Both aspects of this narrative are wrong but are widely peddled by groups that hate America.
President Trump’s proclamation got it exactly right:
“The permanent arrival of Europeans to the Americas was a transformative event that undeniably and fundamentally changed the course of human history and set the stage for the development of our great Nation. Therefore, on Columbus Day, we honor the skilled navigator and man of faith, whose courageous feat brought together continents and has inspired countless others to pursue their dreams and convictions — even in the face of extreme doubt and tremendous adversity.”
There was no deprecating either Columbus or this country in his proclamation. That wasn’t always the case. Writing at Powerline, the astute Scott Johnson notes “Obama’s Columbus Day proclamations broke with tradition. They introduced into presidential proclamations of Columbus Day the multicultural assault on the holiday.” Trump, mercifully, is having none of it. After eight years of an affirmative action President, Americans are starved for a leader who actually loves the country–and the people–he governs.
Antifa has declared war on this national holiday, calling it “Deface Columbus Day.” The NYPD has a twenty-four hour guard around the Columbus statue in New York City. Good for the Italian American community there for being alert and for pressuring Bolshevik mayor Bill De Blasio to take preemptive action.
There is nothing that progressives won’t defile by politicizing it: national holidays (how they hate Thanksgiving), national pastimes like professional football games, bathrooms (!) and so forth. Their agenda is always one of destruction, of pulling down. They have nothing, of course, to replace what they destroy but that’s not the point. Making America just another country, with all the mediocrity it implies, is their true goal.
History exonerates Columbus from the numerous false charges on the Left. He wrote favorably about natives he met and continuously exhorted his men to treat them with respect, to refrain from marauding, raping and plundering. Did you know that Columbus executed two of his men who violated those commands? Probably not because the narrative has been seized by those who wish to destroy our cultural inheritance.
Fortunately, this year we see groups pushing back against the cultural revolution some wish to inflict on our country. Confederate statue nonsense, as well as refusing to stand for the flag and the national anthem, are but the latest installment from some who hate America, who see it as founded on corrupt and flawed premises.
Italian heritage groups and others are correcting the falsehoods about Columbus and it is long past time that they did. Their website Truth About Columbus is a much needed antidote to the poison continuously pumped out by the left in academia, the media and the entertainment industry. The website notes that “[o]pposition to Columbus is not a recent development. In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan mounted a bigoted campaign against the explorer because he was Catholic, Italian and sailed under the Spanish flag.”
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Columbus Day is yet another fundamental aspect of our American identity that has come under assault by the Left. All forms of patriotism are mocked and derided, the simple enjoyment of a football game has been ruined by the forcible injection of anti-American vitriol and violence is advocated by some for the crime of voicing an opinion with which they disagree.
Yet the result, on balance, has been a happy reaction from mainstream Americans: laughter and derision directed toward the perpetually angry and a refusal to be cowed by their latest social justice warrior tactic. They will celebrate Christopher Columbus and they’ll continue to partake in past times that are quintessentially American with no hesitation and certainly no guilt.
If you’re on social media today, you can do your bit by using the hashtags #KeepColumbus and #SaveColumbusDay. Sure it’s a small thing but it is also something new; there was nothing like it last year to help people push back against those who wish to destroy our culture. Although Trump largely didn’t run on cultural issues, he’s clearly governing from a place across the board that has the support of the vast majority of Americans. He, and they, realize full well that there are many ways to make America great again.
Happy Columbus Day!
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In addition to Alpha News, John Gilmore is also a contributor to The Hill. He is the founder and executive director of Minnesota Media Monitor.™ He blogs at MinnesotaConservatives.org and is on Twitter under @Shabbosgoy. He can be reached at Wbua@nycunarjfza.pbz
John Gilmore
John Gilmore is an author, freelance writer & former opinion columnist for Alpha News. He blogs at minnesotaconservatives.org & is @Shabbosgoy on Twitter
