GET READY for the assault upon Columbus. As the five-hundredth anniversary of 1492 approaches, the American mainstream, with justified pride, will be celebrating his achievements; but the academic and racialist Left will be denigrating him. In the forthcoming Conquest of Paradise (Knopf), Kirkpatrick Sale provides a summa of anti-Columbus argument.
The gravamen of the Left’s case against Columbus you could readily surmise, even if the charges had not begun to appear in the press. He was a Eurocentric white male, and a Christian to boot. The European explorers and traders were cruel—as, sometimes, they were. The Europeans exterminated many Indians—as, sometimes, they did. But the big charge against Columbus is—that he discovered America.
Comments