By Eric Martindale
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11 Oct, 2021
It’s Columbus Day, and time again for the annual tradition of historical revisionists and haters of Christianity to bash Christopher Columbus. I want none of it, and I couldn’t care less if he was Spanish, Italian, or Jewish. The case in favor of Christopher Columbus is the case for Western Civilization. If you believe that the progress of the world is being guided by the growth and maturation of Western Civilization and the spread of Christianity, then Columbus Day should be celebrated. If you believe that some other value regime is better for the world, chances are you want to vilify the man. That’s how the battle lines are drawn. History is ugly, plain and simple. It’s full of invasions, wars, slavery, oppression, famine, and misery. That didn’t start with Columbus, or with The Crusades. Not even with the Muslims that plundered and invaded the Mediterranean and southern Europe for hundreds of years, leading to the counterassault known as the Crusades in the Middle East, and as the Reconquista in Spain and Portugal. No, the evils of the world go back thousands of years, far before the founding of Christianity and Western Civilization. The glass of history isn’t half empty, it is half full. What really matters is the advances that we have today in engineering and technology, in medicine, in computers and electronics, in the arts and sciences, and in economics, literature, government, and democracy. These advances have occurred because Western Civilization and the social structure of Christian society allowed these advances to occur. Yes, there were bumps in the road like what happened to that Copernicus guy, but progress still occurred. Despite our flaws and despite all of the inequalities and injustices remaining, humanity and civilization has greatly advanced under the Christian Western system. Thank you Jesus, and thank you Columbus. This is our history, and what matters most is where we have arrived. I openly acknowledge that much work remains to be done. If I thought we were done with the need for advances, my Welcome Movement website and blog would not have been created. I would be singing the praises of Donald Trump instead of advocating that he become more Christian, more humble before God, and less crass and domineering. Christopher Columbus is important and must be honored because he’s at the very center of the progress of Western Civilization. It doesn’t matter that other explorers and pioneers set foot in North America long before Columbus. Let me explain. Yes, the Chinese visited our West Coast, and mapped it out. They referred to America as “Fusang”. The Japanese were here as well. The ancient Minoans from Crete had massive copper mines in Upper Michigan and Minnesota. The largest mine on Isle Royale in Lake Superior is called “Minong” by the Native Americans, obviously a reference to Minoan, as is the place name of Minnesota. I wonder what Sota means in ancient Minoan? I’ll put my money on cold or snow. The ancient Egyptians were here, and the Carthaginians. Maya or Maya Rata is an ancient region of Sri Lanka as well as the name of a modern province in that country, with architecture identical to that of the Mayan civilization in Mexico, and dating to the same time period. Many words, and some cultural practices and beliefs are the same in both regions, and their calendars are in synch. To this day, South Asian DNA remains a significant component in the Yucatan, Belize, and Guatemala. Here’s one of many sources on this connection https://thegr8wall.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/similarities-between-the-hindu-the-maya-culture/ There are hundreds of Muslim place names in America, from Allamunchy in New Jersey to Tallahassee in Florida. There are Medina’s and Mecca’s in multiple states, and even American towns with exact place names for small towns in Turkey. Almost all of them have the same story, which is “the place name was Native American in origin.” Native Americans in the Eastern United States and the maritime provinces of Canada fear taking ancestry DNA tests, and they bitterly resent the findings showing substantial DNA from the Mediterranean region and the Middle East. They call it the curse of the Middle Eastern DNA. Rather than accept these DNA results at face value, modern geneticists have come up with a twisted theory called The Founder Effect to try and justify the findings. It’s a really bad case of science starting with a conclusion and working backwards to find the evidence to support it. I’d love to see Elizabeth Warren’s full DNA results. No doubt it shows substantial Middle Eastern DNA, and that may be why her test result showed almost no “Native American” DNA, to her great embarrassment. The actual origin of Native Americans, especially the Creek and Cherokee, is a matter of major discussion all over the internet. https://accessgenealogy.com/native/cherokee-dna.htm and https://www.woowoomedia.com/dna-scientists-claim-that-cherokees-are-from-the-middle-east/ Yes, the Muslims were here in America in huge numbers. The famous Piri Reis map was compiled in 1513 by an Ottoman Empire admiral using older source maps that no longer exist. The Piri Reis map shows amazing detail of places not yet reached by European explorers as of 1513. Columbus records in his log encountering a wooden sailing ship on the coast of Jamaica, with occupants in colorful clothing. He could not discern their place of origin, but the Native Americans had no ships. There were Black settlements in Nicaragua and Costa Rica prior to the slave trade, and likely founded by Muslim traders from Senegal and Guinea. They left gold artifacts with an unusual alloy mix identical to gold produced in Guinea, West Africa, and found nowhere else in the world. Various European groups such as the Vikings, the Basque, the Welsh, the Irish, and the Templars were likely in America as well. Their contact may have been more fleeting, but they also left various artifacts. The explorer Giovanni Verrazano was the first modern European to visit what is now Newport, Rhode Island. His log and his map note a stone tower which is still standing and shrouded in controversy. It’s clearly of European architecture, and it has been repaired and repointed so many times that nobody knows for sure who first built it, or when. Carbon dating of mortar can only prove when a repointing occurred, not when the stones were lain. Here’s one of hundreds of theories on the tower. http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/did-giovanni-verrazano-visit-the-newport-tower Doesn’t all of this make the case that Columbus was not so important? Not at all, just read on. What was the result of all those settlements and civilizations from all those great peoples from all of those places? What came of them? What lasting advances were made? How was the world made a better place? The answer is nothing. Nothing at all. The Muslims in particular were all over North America and left so many place names, but the physical and cultural contact was largely lost at least 200 years before Columbus, and the religion was extinct in the West by the time the Europeans colonists arrived. The contact that really mattered was the contact made by Columbus in the name of Kingdom of Spain. And that contact came only months after the last Muslim forces in Spain surrendered, and the Reconquista was complete. The knowledge of Columbus’s voyage swept Europe, and led to the major European powers exploring and settling the America’s. A vast exchange of plants and animals occurred called The Columbian Exchange. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange It is considered an epic event in world history. The connection of the Old and New worlds had a profound impact on all of humanity. Europe accumulated massive wealth and power, and overpopulated from the new calorie-rich food supplies, especially corn and potatoes, that were imported and grown all over Europe. Much of that overpopulation was sent to other parts of the world as conquerors and immigrants. There was nothing like the Columbian Exchange resulting from any of the earlier civilizations that visited America. Cattle, sheep, pigs, and horses didn’t make it to the New World with the Minoans, Mayans, Muslims, or any other Pre-Columbian group. Turkeys, corn, potatoes, tobacco, and tomatoes didn’t arrive in Europe either. There was no massive collapse of the Native American population from disease, and the migrants from the Old World in those past eras eventually mixed with the Natives and lost their cultural identities. The next question is, was the Columbian Exchange a good thing? Would the world have been a better place, or advanced quicker, without this exchange. The answer is probably No. Human civilization had several opportunities for civilization to greatly advance in the past, and become “modern”. Ancient Egypt was very advanced in many regards, and even today with our best modern technology, we could not build the great pyramids. There are depictions in Egyptian art of devices that look like flying machines and even lightbulbs. Another drawing shows a baby mammoth, perhaps from Labrador? Airplanes may have flown the skies of ancient India as well. The Muslim World was very advanced around the year 1000. They also experimented with electricity and had batteries. They made spectacular advances in science and mathematics, and they founded the world’s first true universities. Timbuktu in Mali had a university before any in the Christian world. The ancient Chinese used natural gas for lighting and heating, and possibly manufacturing. They had thousands of miles of natural gas pipelines made out of bamboo. Their naval armada sailed all around the Indian Ocean, and contained huge wooden ships called junks that were far larger than those of any European power. Well, what became of these civilizations and their advances? The answer is about the same as what became of the explorers and settlers that reached America before Columbus. That answer is very little. Those civilizations reached their glory days, and then faded. That’s why they deserve to be little more than historical footnotes. It’s the history of the Christian West that really counted. What succeeded was the work of Columbus, and all the advances in Europe that happened only because the European powers extracted so much wealth from the New World, and benefitted from trade. In the 1700’s something happened in England and the American colonies that never happened any time in the history of the world. We experienced the Industrial Revolution. All of the world has benefitted. The Industrial Revolution happened within the context of Christianity and Christian civilization. It didn’t happen in ancient Egypt, Baghdad, or China. There is something about our Western value system, our views, and our perspective on the world that lends itself to social and economic development, and to democracies replacing monarchies. A key series of events occurred. First, the Renaissance led to the invention of the printing press in Germany by Johannes Guttenberg. Second, the mass printing of The Bible made the Protestant reformation inevitable. Third, the Protestant reformation set the stage for capitalism, the industrial revolution, and the rise of democracy. Thus, all of our great advances are rooted in our Christian value system, and in the rise of modern Christianity. I certainly don’t bash the Catholics, but we’d probably still be sailing in wooden ships with cannons, and living in monarchies, if Martin Luther didn’t post his 95 theses. Other religions and other value systems don’t generate societies as successful as that of the Christian West. Christopher Columbus and his voyages were a key step in the entire development of Western Civilization, and led to the rise of Europe. That’s not only our history, it’s the most relevant history of the world. Ours is the system and the culture that has conquered the world in so many ways, not just militarily. All major aspects of society from religion and democracy to education, medicine, science, engineering, technology, and the arts has largely derived from that of Western Christian civilization. Thank you, Christopher Columbus. You created our world. Yes, you deserve to be celebrated, warts and all. If some great revolution covering all aspects of society had happened in Japan, Nigeria, or Iran instead of in Europe, surely the world’s history, technology, and culture would be focused on their past instead. Our homes and businesses, and our public infrastructure, would be modeled after some other part of the world. But no, that didn’t happen. We don’t have natural gas pipelines made out of bamboo, do we? Modern western cities, even places like Dubai, Seoul, Tokyo, Brazilia, and Nairobi, don’t look like Jericho. The rest of the world is modeled after us. This is the ultimate legacy of Christopher Columbus. This matters way more than him spreading slavery or being responsible for diseases, oppression, and murder that claimed the lives of the Taino natives on Hispaniola. Equal and greater evils had been happening for thousands of years, and WITHOUT any advance of civilization to show for it. Yes, the glass of history is half full, not half empty. The misery wrought by Columbus has born fruit and created the modern world.
We know there has been oppression associated with Western Civilization. We know there have been wars, and there will be more. We know there are great injustices still unresolved. We know that our history wasn’t perfect, and the motives of whole nations and empires were selfish and insincere. But we also know that progress occurs in phases. For instance, our Founding Fathers simply could not have established a system of democracy covering women and racial minorities. They just weren’t ready. They were the most progressive and advanced people in power anywhere in the world at the time, but the best they could implement was democracy and equality for all White men. They weren’t ready. Society wasn’t ready. Should we mock and blame them for the great steps that they took, and demand that their names be removed from public buildings? No, that’s just plain ignorant. The Founding Fathers took the first steps. Nobody else took them, did they? No other society in the world was on a path towards the full equality of all men in their society, no less to include women and other racial groups. In time, other people took the necessary further steps, and the social structure of our Christian-based society allowed it to happen. That’s how progress unfolds, that’s how history moves forwards. What about good ole’ Chris? Didn’t he bring misery and oppression wherever he visited. Well, he wasn’t ready to establish a just and fair society either. He was only ready to expand the empire of Spain, and the fortunes of businessmen there. The nations of Europe were ready to advance themselves, and to spread Christianity to other lands. That was about it, at that time. Are the indigenous peoples of the America’s, Africa, and Asia better off as Christians, and for adopting Western Civilization? Absolutely. Not a doubt about it. The Christian value system is the best value system, and the best proof of this claim is the development of the modern world. Thank you, Christopher Columbus. The real reason some people hate Columbus and our Founding Fathers is their desire for historical revisionism not just for Columbus, but for all of history. They want to portray the whole world as groups of people in conflict with other groups, and as exploiting and oppressing other groups. This is their message, this is their venom, and this is their politics. They are an unholy alliance of socialist, anarchists, atheists, and artists. They hate religion, especially Christianity. They want no limits on sexual morality or substance abuse. They are advancing a culture war, and they have largely conquered academia, the media, the fashion and entertainment industries, and the tech sector. Their intellectual development is that of a rebellious teenager. Yet collectively, they have more power than our political leaders, and they have the full determination to use it to dominate our society. That’s what Columbus bashing is all about, and it’s time for everyone to choose sides on this issue. It’s not about analyzing history and respecting the progress that humanity has made. Nor is it about building on that progress, and planning the next steps. Nope, Columbus bashing is all about spreading hate and political mischief, and upending our entire society. And the tip of the pitchfork is pointing squarely at the neck of Christopher Columbus. Our best defense is to educate the public on the role of Christopher Columbus in the advancement of Western Civilization. I have no problem with cities and towns having an Indigenous People’s Day. There’s about 350 days not designated as any kind of holiday in this country. Pick one of them. The second Monday in October is already taken. For more information, and to review all of our blog postings, see www.thewelcomemovement.com
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