OPINION:
Indigenous Peoples Day, celebrated by 17 states and as many as 220 cities, really is not about Indigenous people. Rather, it is a way to attack America as a colonial exploiter.
According to the leftist mythology behind this pseudo-holiday, Christopher Columbus was a monster who was the first White man to murder and rob the original inhabitants of this continent.
Indigenous Peoples Day is also an indictment of those who followed in his footsteps: the pioneers, settlers and builders who constructed the nation’s roads, railroads and cities.
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It is an attack on U.S. foreign policy, the goal of which, according to the left, is to exploit Third World nations. Presumably, we do this by bestowing foreign aid on developing nations and negotiating mutually beneficial trade deals with them.
Columbus was complicated, like so many other historical figures, including George Washington, who owned slaves. Columbus was a man of his time. Sometimes he treated the natives he encountered fairly; other times, not.
Yet his historic voyages opened a hemisphere to civilization.
It is easy, 500 years later, to sit in the comfort of our homes, classrooms and editorial offices and criticize a man whose feats of navigation are still a wonder. Would the world really be a better place if Columbus had stayed in Spain and the Europeans had stayed in Europe?
At the time of Columbus’ first voyage, what became the United States was inhabited mostly by nomadic peoples who had not yet invented the wheel and did not build roads. If Indigenous culture was so great, why did one of the American Indian tribes not build a giant canoe and sail east to discover the Old World?
What Columbus and his successors brought to these shores eventually became the United States of America.
Absent America, there would have been no full flowering of the Industrial Revolution and no constitutional democracy. No one would have stopped the march of totalitarian tyrants in Europe and Asia. No force would have successfully opposed communism, fascism and Islamism.
Without America, who would have invented the telegraph, telephone, airplane, movies, television, personal computer and internet? Who would have developed the assembly line, refrigeration and air conditioning? Who would have drilled oil wells and split the atom?
In 1492, Columbus set sail for the New World. With Indigenous Peoples Day, the left sets sail for never-never land.
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