Christopher Columbus: Saint or Scoundrel? Part 3

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Part 3.

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Western Culture I'd like to shortly cut through the chase. We all know that the enemies of Christopher Columbus, as author

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Thomas A. Bowden calls them, don't really hate Columbus as much as they do Western Civilization.

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He just represents Western Civilization to them, and in their minds multiculturalism is key. They believe that every civilization is equal.

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Bowden explains, What ways you may ask?

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Science, technology, industry, capitalism, chivalry, etiquette, fine arts, law, high morals, etc. all came from the

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West, not because Europeans are racially superior in any way, but because they were shaped by biblical assumptions, after the

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Reformation especially. Compare this to the way the Aztecs lived. The Aztec religion sprang from a compulsive instinct to attract those natural forces which were beneficial to man and repel those which were malign.

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The Aztecs felt under a compelling duty to offer human sacrifices to these gods, tearing out the hearts of living victims by black -robed, long -haired, chanting priests, and that was a relatively merciful death compared to being scourged or eaten alive.

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The killings were on a large scale and would reach thousands on a single day as failure to influence the gods became a frenzy of slaughter.

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Among other historic sources, we have record of what happened at the inauguration in 1487 of the temple of Huzilpalchtli, the god of war and of the sun.

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At the ceremony, some 20 ,000 human beings were sacrificed on the temple altars at the command of the

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Aztec emperor Azotl to appease the monstrous deity. Even though most of us should know that most of the indigenous people were wiped out as a result of smallpox, which wasn't intentional, germs weren't even discovered yet, there were still no doubt some horrible

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Europeans. The conquistadors killed the Aztecs, but compared to the Aztecs, what was their real crime?

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As Bowdoin says, at the very worst, the Europeans treated the Indians no differently than they treated one another.

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It is significant that such actions were done against the culture of western civilization as opposed to the

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Aztecs whose crimes were consistent with their worldview. Bowdoin states, what happened is that there were

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Europeans who abandoned civilized standards in dealing with the Indians. The problem wasn't that those Europeans had too much civilization, the problem was that they had too little.

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Most of the atrocities against Native Americans in the U .S. have been at the hands of a tyrannical federal government.

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President Andrew Jackson's Trail of Tears, all the way up to the Indian Wars of the late 1800s are the result of anti -western tyranny.

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Don't forget that the same government, generals, and army that committed countless crimes against the South, at the time the very epitome of western culture, after the

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War for Southern Independence, is the same unconstitutional government that wiped out the Native Americans a few years later.

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It was the natives who fought alongside the South that received the worst treatment, i .e. Oklahoma Territory.

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Those who hate Columbus and western civilization are ironically following in the footsteps of the European Frenchman Jean -Jacques