Christopher Columbus: Saint or Scoundrel? Part 3

Western Civilization, Multiculturalism, and the Aztec Contrast

I'd like to shortly cut through the chase. We all know that the enemies of Christopher Columbus, as author Thomas A. Bowden calls them, don't really hate Columbus as much as they do Western Civilization.

He just represents Western Civilization to them. In their minds multiculturalism is key. They believe that every civilization is equal. Bowden explains, in our age of multiculturalism and politically correct attitudes, it is considered bad manners and even wrong to claim any superiority for Western Civilization and its achievements.

But if we take an objective look at the standards of men's lives, then Western Civilization is superior in very visible ways. What ways you may ask? Science, technology, industry, capitalism, chivalry, etiquette, fine arts, law, high morals, etc. all came from the West.

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

The Aztecs fell 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.

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. 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.

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

The conquistadors killed the Aztecs, but compared to the Aztecs, what was their real crime? As Bowdoin says, at the very worst, the Europeans treated the Indians no differently than they treated one another.

It is significant that such actions were done against the culture of Western civilization as opposed to the Aztecs whose crimes were consistent with their worldview. Bowdoin states, what happened is that there were 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. Most of the atrocities against Native Americans in the U .S. have been at the hands of a tyrannical federal government.

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

It was the natives who fought alongside the South that received the worst treatment, i .e. Oklahoma Territory. Those who hate Columbus and Western civilization are ironically following in the footsteps of the European Frenchman Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who postulated that a noble South would be a better place to live and work.