WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2016

What’s all this crap about trashing Christopher Columbus?

You may be aware that in 2016, it will have been 524 years since he sailed the ocean blue. The revisionists, soreheads, and people with little or no lives of their own have been howling a dozen or more different tunes about why the discovery of the western world was a horrible mistake and that we should still be clothed in potato skins (animal skins not being politically correct) and communicating by drawing pictures in the dirt with sticks.

First of all, yes, there were people here when Columbus got here. They were not lost. Maybe they didn’t exactly know where they were, but they probably didn’t care. And it is true that the Vikings or the Irish or a bunch of Swiss bobsled riders landed on the shores of what is now North America before Columbus. Asians crossed the land bridge into Alaska and wandered down into the lower 48. Hell, even people from outer space were here, if you listen to the other nut cases.

What Columbus did was to TELL SOMEONE ABOUT IT! He was looking for a way to make a name for himself pick up some money, and get trade going. He was looking for Japan. And he and his crew did not believe they would fall off the edge of the earth. Most folks, even then, knew the world was round. Columbus had a purpose. It wasn’t to just sail around and go back home. He was a mover and a shaker.

Imagine what it would have been like if others had made “discoveries” and then forgot about them. Suppose Alexander Graham Bell would have said to Watson or whatever his name was, “Come here, I need you” then decided that a telephone would have been an intrusion and skipped the whole thing. Or if Edison had invented the light bulb and then had second thoughts about putting oil lamps out of business. Or if he decided he didn’t want to run up the electric bill. So he just put the bulb aside and went on to one of his naps.

It doesn’t do much good to invent, perfect, or discover something if you don’t tell anyone about it. That’s what Columbus did. That’s what he was paid to do,

People have a tendency to rewrite history to suit themselves. Usually it is done by a ruling party of a dictator. The Russians are probably completely confused because so much of their past bas been doctored by the Communist Party and the various emperors who have sat uneasily at its head. It happens all the time in countries all over the world. In the United States, even the smallest pressure group can get things changed to fit their wild hare ideas of how things were, are, and should be. Stranger yet, they try to get the government to pay for it and support it with the money taken away from the people the changes will damage. What a country!

So let’s lighten up a bit, folks. Columbus was, in effect, an act of nature. The strong are going to survive at the expense of the weak, the stupid, and the ones who don’t do anything with what they have. If it had not been Columbus, someone else would have come along and did what Ol’ Chris did…and that was simply to say, “Hey, guys, look what I found. Is this great or what?”

It’s sort of like members of Congress discovering they could write bad checks and skip out on meals without paying. Had just one congressman committed such an act, not much would have taken place. But once he found a good thing, the blood suckers came in droves to take advantage of the weak and stupid…in this case, voters.

So don’t blame Columbus.

The views and opinions in this column do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the author. They do, however, reflect the philosophy of The Whistleblower, its staff, its management, and most importantly—its advertisers.