Columbus Day

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. It is the 11th of October, so happy Columbus Day to everyone out there.

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You probably didn't even know, some of you, that it was Columbus Day. There's not a whole lot of fanfare, unless you're in certain communities,

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I suppose. And growing up, Columbus Day was important and special in a way for me, not as much because of Columbus as much as because we got the day off school.

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And of course, my mom would talk a little bit about the significance of Christopher Columbus, which I'll get to in a minute. But we would go to further upstate in New York than we lived, and we would pick apples.

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That was the day we would do apple picking. It's getting towards the peak of fall. Very pretty, depending on where you are.

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If you're in way upstate, in the Adirondacks especially, it's probably already past peak, but we wouldn't go quite that far.

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Today, where I live now in New York, it's actually, the city, especially since COVID, since 9 -11 and then

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COVID really made this much more prevalent, but city people have moved up. And a lot of people work in the city.

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They spend their weekends, though, in the Hudson Valley. And so the area that I live actually has a lot of orchards, but if you go there for apple picking these days, especially on a weekend, you probably just don't wanna do it.

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It's gonna be really expensive. And you're going for the experience. You're not going because it makes economical sense.

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When I was growing up, it did make economic sense. You could go and pick up drops, actually, the apples that are dropped from the trees, get a bag, and you would pay less.

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And of course, it was an honor system. People just kind of trusted each other, and here's a bag for drops, and it's gonna be less expensive.

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But New York State Legislature, maybe a decade ago, made that illegal. You can't do that anymore.

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Can't pick up the drops. And why did they do that? I'm not exactly sure. It must have something to do with health concerns.

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I don't know, I don't know. They probably did it in the name of health concerns, but it probably had nothing really to do with health concerns.

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But anyway, we would pick up the drops. It would be inexpensive.

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My mom would make apple pies. We would make applesauce. We would eat the apples, of course, out on the orchard, and usually it was a really nice family drive.

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We'd have a picnic or something. Those are my memories of Columbus Day growing up. There was nothing negative attached to it.

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There was nothing bad about it when I was a kid, and many of you probably have similar experiences if you're my age or older.

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Unfortunately, that's no longer the case, generally speaking, at least, in the United States. Columbus Day, if it's talked about at all, it's usually, unless you're in a strong Italian community,

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Columbus Day is a negative thing. If you're going to public school, Columbus is going to be talked about very negatively.

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And a lot of people now are celebrating Indigenous Persons Day instead of Columbus Day, because Columbus Day, I mean, that's just about white privilege, and really, it seems to have focused now on, if you celebrate the coming of Christopher Columbus, basically you're celebrating the genocide of Native Americans, all tribes.

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I mean, it's really a very black and white narrative that's given, and Columbus gets to bear the weight for just about all of it.

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And that's kind of unfortunate in my mind. And I don't want to defend everything Columbus ever said or did, but the whole point behind Columbus Day, and this is what

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I want to get into, is people used to have, I think, more of a providential kind of, and here's the thing, let me back up two steps here.

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Let's talk a little bit about historiography real quick. So how we view the past, what kinds of tools of analysis do we use, what assumptions do we bring to the past when we're analyzing it?

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In fact, I'll turn this off. I'm gonna read an article, but we don't need to see it yet. So going back in history, looking at times, figures, significant events, as soon as you denote something as significant, as soon as you say there's a sequence of events before it, a sequence of events after it, but this one stands out.

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We need to look at this one because there's something significant about it. As soon as you start engaging in that, you're letting a little bit of providence get into the door.

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Or if it's not provident, if it's not something that's focused on Christianity or a belief in God or a higher power or some design or some place we're going in history, at the very least, what you're saying is there's some kind of a narrative.

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There's something going on that makes this event significant. Why else would it be significant? What's the point?

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Why study history at all? Why study any person? Why study any event if there's not something important about it?

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Lessons we can learn from it, something that a great feat, a great contribution that has somehow influenced us in the present, a grand display of character, of innovation, of exploration, of bravery.

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You know, there's something significant that we come together as a community and say this is significant.

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And that's why we want our children to know about it. So we impart it to them. And in so doing, they gain hopefully character, they gain their own sense of innovation and exploration and bravery and all of that.

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And they also can draw inspiration from the past. They can look back and say, there's someone else that exemplified this.

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I wanna be like them in some way, knowing they're imperfect, knowing they're fallen, but knowing that, you know what, despite that, they were able to do something that is significant.

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Or even if they're a scoundrel, even if they're someone who's, you know, we shouldn't look at favorably in any way, they did something.

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There was something they did that affects us today and it affected our ancestors, it affected the people of that time period.

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And it's important to know about that. History repeats itself, or at least it rhymes with itself over time.

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And studying history is studying the stories of people. So I think having a providential outlook is somewhat inescapable.

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Now, I understand, if you read my book, by the way, and you can get it at, you can go to ChristianityAndSocialJustice .com

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if you wanna copy this, ChristianityAndSocialJustice .com. I talk a little bit about the Whig interpretation of history.

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And I talk about basically how folks, social justice advocates need to be very careful that they don't let their own understanding of, we'll use providence for lack of a better term.

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I don't know if they would, unless they're Christians in some flavor of Christianity, if they would wanna use the term providence.

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But social justice activists, whether secular or in the church or wherever, they do have somewhat of an idea that history is, there's a crescendo happening.

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We're moving towards something. And progressives, generally, they look at the past and they just wanna, it's kind of like a ladder you kick off.

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You got to the window, you got where you needed to go with the ladder, kick it off. We don't need the ladder anymore. We don't need that history stuff as much.

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Unless we can use it as a warning to look how bad the past was.

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We are so far farther along. We're so much more evolved than our ancestors. I mean, we're just getting better.

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We have so far, you hear this all the time. We have a long, long way to go. We're almost there or we'll get there someday.

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Maybe it'll be centuries from now. We have a long way to go. But keep pushing because there's the light at the end of the tunnel, right?

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But you look back and history is just, it is just the horrible place, horrible country almost, that we had to kind of get through to get to where we are now.

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That's kind of how progressives look at history. Now, there is somewhat of a providential outlook to that. Whether they believe in God or whether they believe there's some kind of an evolutionary design of some kind at play.

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Design is kind of inescapable in a way. You have to invoke it somewhere along the line. If you wanna have any significance, if you wanna say anything about anything, you have to have some reason to do it.

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So there is a sense in which where we came from is not something to draw inspiration from, as much, unless there's some forward thinker that we can look to, like, hey, he really bucked the trend in that society or something.

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But in general, history is not something you draw inspiration from. It's something that you look back as just this horrible time, especially as it pertains to Western Europeans.

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They are just the worst of everyone. And of course, that's a very Western European idea.

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It's Europeans who are being ashamed of their own history. But the whole point is to look forward, to look at this grand new day that's about to come.

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We're getting there. Keep pushing for equity, diversity, inclusion, and that's the goal. We're gonna get there.

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That utopia is coming, right? So my only point in bringing this up is there is sort of a providential outlook.

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And people like Jim Artisbe and others, what they do is they, when they look at history, they kind of flatten everything down to this ideological, it's all about power relationships, it's all about dismantling hierarchies, promoting equity, inclusion, diversity, somewhere along, that's what it's all about.

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And anything that is outside of that doesn't really matter. There's no significance attached to it. It's just not significant, it's not important.

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Because the whole point is achieving equity, diversity, inclusion, that utopia, right? And that's really all there is anyway, is power relationships.

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And so when you look at history that way, it flattens it, you don't see other things, you're leaving out certain things, you're blowing certain things out of proportion.

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Sometimes you're even lying. You're just fabricating things to support a narrative. Because what matters is the narrative.

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Because the narrative is the engine by which you get to the next point. That's what you need.

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You need to vilify the past in order to show that it was this horrible place, it wasn't what we're shooting for, we're shooting for something different.

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Don't try to go backward now, right? That's progressives, that's how they think. And there is a design behind that.

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There is a certain element of providence that we're, and whether, and that's probably not, like I said, the best word to use, but I don't really know what word to use.

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They do have this kind of idea that we're just getting better, better, better, better, and we got a long way to go, but we're gonna get there.

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Now, Christians believe man's evil, man's depraved, man has sin, and evil comes from within the heart of man.

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And there's certainly a lot of evil in history. But they also believe we're made in the image of God. And God has a certain design on this universe.

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And that design centers on him, ultimately. History is, and you've heard this probably before, is his story, right?

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History is something that God is doing. And he reveals some things to us in the pages of scripture, but there's some things that he unrolls, kind of his plan for us as history unfolds.

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We see kind of where he's, in his providence, where he is directing everything.

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And we know eventually there's going to be a consummation. Now, no matter what eschatological stripe you believe, whether you're pre -millennial, post -millennial, amillennial, whatever the case may be, there's going to be a time when

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Christ reigns. And history is heading towards this time.

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It doesn't necessarily mean that everything, even if you're post -millennial, it doesn't necessarily mean things are just going to get better, better, and better.

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Because we know from history, there's dips in there, right? So we don't know exactly where we are.

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We know we're in the last days. We've been in those days since Christ's first coming and his return.

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So we know that we're in this already, not yet we're going towards something.

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In the meantime, God's directing his purposes on this earth. He's bringing things about that he wants to have happen.

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And so we believe in a certain sense of providence. Now, some historians will take that and they'll take it to an extent where the

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United States can almost parallels Israel, like we're this shining city on a hill to take the borrow from the

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Puritans. And history becomes this, it centers on America or it centers on, it used to, a lot of English people thought it centered on England.

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And this is part of God's eschatological plan. We know it more often from reading biblical prophecy, we know that the whole world is part of this, but we know that it's going to center more on the

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Middle East than it will, and the church than it will on. And I know that a bunch of covenantal people just got really mad at me for saying

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Middle East. But look, I don't think that's escapable. If you want a new

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Jerusalem, there's something significant about the Middle East, whether or not you think the current state of Israel is significant or not.

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But the church, the Middle East, these are the things biblical prophecy talks about more than anything else, right?

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And so we do see Gog and Magog, we do see some kind of a

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European Union or a vibrant Roman Empire, these kinds of things, especially from a premillennial standpoint, you're looking at these things, you're looking for these things.

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But like I said, whatever eschatological stripe you're from, however you conceive of everything being played out at the end, history is moving towards something.

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Something is happening. God is bringing something about. And in the process, he's also teaching lessons.

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He's also making boundaries for people groups. We see this in Acts 17, right?

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People are moving around, people are hearing the gospel now for the first time, technology is being used to do that.

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There's all kinds of things happening. Why do I bring this all up? What does this have to do with Columbus? Well, it has something to do with Columbus because of this.

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Christopher Columbus was significant to a Christian people especially, because Christopher Columbus was, even though he was before the

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Reformation a little bit, Christopher Columbus brought about a contact from the

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East, from the West to the East, that ensured Christianity would follow. Wasn't necessarily all in Columbus's design, and though we're about to read that Columbus did have, because of the

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Crusades were going on, Columbus did have, there was a bit of a, in his own mind, a providential mission that he was on to try to win back the

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Holy Land and these kinds of things. But we know looking back, Columbus didn't even realize this.

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The significance of him in some ways is this did bring about a contact that allowed for a people who did not know

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God, had not been exposed to the truth of scripture from a Christian viewpoint, they were now exposed, they now had a way, they now had someone they could talk to about that.

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And ever more so as the United States of America formed and other countries in the

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Western Hemisphere, the gospel has gone forward.

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And there's something significant about that. Is that the only thing that's significant about Columbus? No, but Christians, especially when this was more of a

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Christian country, they were able to look back and they were able to see there's some significance there. And everything that Christianity brought with it, the civilizational influence that it had, this was a significant time.

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And any of us who have descended in any way, and most of us have, and even if, look, even if you're

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Native American, even if you're black, even if, most people have some kind of a

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European lineage in them if they live in the United States today, somewhere along the line, not everyone, but most people do. Check your, go get your

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DNA tested at Ancestry .com. You're gonna find there's something there. And that is the result of what

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Columbus brought. Now you could either lament that or be excited about it or just accept it as the truth because it is the truth.

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But Christians in the United States were able to look at that and say, there's something significant about that. That there was something big happening there.

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God was doing something there. And at the very least, the gospel was able to go forward because of this.

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And yeah, did some bad things happen too? Did some diseases spread? Yes, there's no argument there. But if you look at some of even the tribes at that time,

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I think of the Aztecs and some of the sacrifices they make, some of the most barbaric things that they would do, there was a lot of good too.

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We don't talk about it as much today, but there was a lot of good that came from the exposure and even the colonization in some parts.

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And again, not saying there wasn't bad, but there was a lot of good that came from rubbing shoulders with the

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East, Western Europe and so forth. So I wanted to talk today about some of the important things, some of the significant things, why

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Columbus has been celebrated, or at least there's a day given to him. Why is that? We would never do it today, right?

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In the United States. And he's being ripped down all over the place. In fact, tomorrow I am traveling. I don't really have the time to do this, but it's gotta be done.

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We're getting the monument thing out, hopefully by the end of this month. And if not, it's gonna be the beginning of next. But our launch date is

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October 31st. That's when we want American Monument to come out. So realistically, it'll probably be the week after, but we're shooting for it.

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I'm gonna talk to an expert on Christopher Columbus who does not think, he has a lot of critical things to say about Columbus, but does not think

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Columbus Monument should come down. I'm gonna get his take on it. We're gonna talk about this. So that's tomorrow.

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So I don't have the benefit of all that information, but I do have this. And I wanted to share this with you. This is from 2010. 2010, 11 years ago,

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I wrote this. And so I think my writing has changed a lot. There's probably a lot of things I view differently. My research even has probably gotten better.

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But I think in general, I agree with what I said. And so I thought this would be a good article to read. There was one other that was very short that I wanted to also read about the significance of Columbus Day and why people viewed it as significant.

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It's called Happy Columbus Day from the American Remnant. And we'll see, actually, I don't have, if you're watching,

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I don't have it set quite correctly. So I am going to just kind of make this disappear. I'll just read it to you. So story time with John, all right?

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Happy Columbus Day, two -minute read. So this is short. Starting with the dawn, there will be lots of critics of Christopher Columbus buzzing about here with a few thoughts.

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To those, number one, to those who depreciate his achievement, invite them to get back to you after they've set sail with three ships provisioned as Columbus's were, with the same means of navigation and communication in uncharted seas and managed to make landfall anywhere.

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In other words, this was quite a feat. No one had done this. You wanna draw inspiration from someone who was brave, could have gone to his death, and did it so for a higher purpose, which we'll find out about in a second.

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Look at Christopher Columbus. I mean, do you have the bravery to do, I mean, this is like even more so than going to the moon, right?

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People have done that. This is something that, oh, you could talk about the Vikings, I know.

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But at that time, they didn't know. They didn't know anyone who had done this. So would you go to the moon today?

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That probably doesn't take quite the amount of guts it took for Columbus to do what he did. At least as much.

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Number two, to those who say what Columbus brought was holy or predominantly evil, invite them to get back to you after they've given up all the technology that exists in the new world, only because of the contacts beginning with Columbus, possibly starting points, electricity, antibiotics, and the wheel.

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We don't think about it. We take it for granted. Most of the Native Americans, if not all of them,

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I mean, they didn't have wagons. They didn't have even the rudimentary technology that Westerners were able to bring.

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Number three, to those who say Columbus didn't discover anything because people were living here, ask them to estimate when the old world would have become aware that the new world was inhabited if the contact could only come from the new world.

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Require them to point to concrete evidence of, say, navigation beyond the site of land by inhabitants of the new world before 1492 and extrapolation therefrom to back up their estimate.

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This is not to say that Columbus was perfect or always behaved morally. He may even have done some things that we consider gravely evil, many of those we justly honor half, at times acted in ways that are difficult to defend, but they are perfectly reasonable rejoinders to the growing number who deny that Columbus achieved anything or who assert that all that Columbus set in motion was evil.

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Columbus was indeed a great man, and there are many reasons to be grateful that in 1492 he sailed the ocean blue.

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Happy Columbus Day. I thought this was just a good three questions to kind of, when someone attacks, put them on the defensive.

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Ask them a good question like this. And I think these are helpful.

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So that's what I wanted to read to you from the, I think the American, I just exited out of it.

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I think it was the American reformer or, ah, hold on, let me see, let me see. I have the history point out.

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It was the American remnant, American remnant. You can go find that. It's called Happy Columbus Day. Now, I want to talk to you about something that I wrote, and this is a while ago.

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So like I said, 11 years ago, and I haven't read it now in a while, so I figured this would be fun.

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Let's go through it together. Christopher Columbus, Saint or Scoundrel? And you can find this at worldviewconversation .com

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forward slash Christopher dash Columbus forward slash. Many years ago, as I was on an evangelism trip at a local mall with a group of friends and church leaders,

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I noticed a T -shirt hanging in the window of a New Age shop with the inscription, Homeland Security, Fighting Terrorism Since 1492.

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Above the writing was pasted a picture of a mounted group of Plains Indians from the late 1800s. In reaction to this display of historical, and man,

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I used words, interesting. I don't use words this big now. Etymological, hmm, stupidity.

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I muttered under my breath, that's inaccurate. The next thing I knew, one of the group leaders was chiding me for denying what he deemed to be historically irrefutable, and like a parrot, he spewed the old slander against Americans of European descent.

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The white man has done horrible things to the Indians. You ought to start reading some books. When, you think

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I was a little upset about this as I'm reading this, I'm realizing, I don't, I think I've chilled out a little bit.

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This is, I wouldn't get quite that upset today with something like this.

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But anyway, that was me then, I guess, in 2011, probably right after this situation.

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And I just lost my light. Hold on one second here. Okay, I got my light back. Let's keep going here.

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I basically reference, I talk about this youth leader, and he said that he referenced movies, he referenced common knowledge.

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He said that I should read books, but he hadn't read books. Anyway, this is all fluff. We need to get past this stuff.

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Let's get to the meat here. Europeans have done bad things to Native Americans, but you'll find that for every finger a multiculturalist wants to point at white

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Christians, they have three fingers pointing back. Europeans didn't introduce slavery to the New World. The Natives already had it.

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Neither did Europeans introduce theft. The indigenous tribes were masters at subjugating enemy tribes and stealing their land.

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Does anyone seriously want to go back to the times of ripping out a fellow human's heart to appease a sun god? I'm probably referencing the

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Aztecs there. My point is not that all Europeans are superior in moral character. My point is that mankind is sinful.

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All cultures have blood on their heads, and it's extremely hypocritical to bash the exceptional evil in one culture, even to the point of recreating their culture's heroes, such as Christopher Columbus, while ignoring the evil in their own.

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Let's take a look at Christopher Columbus and the Western culture in general, not to prove that it's perfect or sinless, but to show why it is superior to the pagan cultures that dominated the

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American continents before 1492. All right, so here's, I've committed a cardinal sin at this point when

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I said this as a very young man, because I'm saying that Western culture in general, though it has problems, is superior to the pagan cultures, and I use that word, that dominated the

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American continent. And so this is kind of, this is like heresy today.

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You're not allowed to say this. In fact, at the time I wrote this, this was probably pretty controversial, but now it's really controversial.

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How dare you say that a culture might be better than another culture because of the religion, that culture, the mores that come from a religion, that culture has adopted and secures and defends.

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So Christianity, even if it, there's no culture that has 100 % Christians, right? But there are cultures where Christianity has influenced them to such an extent that it's made its way into their laws and their values and all of that, and that is superior.

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And as a Christian, this is the thing I don't understand. As a Christian, how do you not believe that? You have to believe that.

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Otherwise, what's the point then? If Christianity is, there's nothing morally superior about Christianity than let's say any other animist religion out there, then how is

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Christianity true? Why follow Christianity? If it's the true religion, it should be good.

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It should have the right ethics. And when those are applied, it should bring about better results than animistic religions.

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This is kind of inescapable if you just believe Christianity. What God says about his own law, what the authors of scripture say about the law of God.

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If that's even remotely applied, even a little bit, it's better than not having it at all, not applying it at all.

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Okay, first a small comment on the T -shirt. Okay, we're getting past this. I'm not talking about this T -shirt.

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I try to, I was really upset, I guess, as a young man about this T -shirt. Was I, I guess I would have been. Yeah, I was a very young man at this time.

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I was very upset about this T -shirt. And I think I was more upset with probably someone who told me I didn't know what I was talking about.

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Anyway, we're getting past this. It's interesting.

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I say in this, would similar statements that are made about the shirt, fighting terrorism since 1492, would similar statements be made about Nat Turner or Crazy Horse?

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Would those be tolerated? It's interesting, Nat Turner now is a hero. In Richmond, where they just took the

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Robert E. Lee Memorial down, there's now an Emancipation Monument, which is kind of inaccurate because it has the

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Emancipation Proclamation as the date, and which is not the date. That's not when the slaves were freed.

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But anyway, Nat Turner is on the monument, his name. And Nat Turner was considered basically a terrorist, a very, like an actual one, a really evil man killing people ruthlessly.

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And now he's a hero because guess what? He rose up for the struggle.

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Anyway, it's just interesting. 11 years ago, Nat Turner was still kind of a bad guy, in a way.

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So now, not so much. Things have changed even since then. Okay, here's the meat.

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Was Christopher Columbus a terrorist? Absolutely not. There is far more evidence to equate Columbus with Homeland Security than there is to suggest that the

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Native Americans across the board were anti -terrorist groups. This is kind of a weird, for me as a, however young I was when

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I wrote this, I don't think I, I would not say this now to you. I would never equate Columbus with Homeland Security. I think

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I'm just, I'm going with the analogy of the shirt. But no, Columbus is neither. He's not Homeland Security, and he's certainly not a terrorist.

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Even a slight reading into the life of Columbus will show that he came to the new world for three things. Number one, evangelism.

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Number two, trade. And number three, alliances. Now you gotta understand, this evangelism, this is pre -Reformation.

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This is, this would probably, in most of the evangelical people in their minds today, this would not have been evangelism.

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And I probably shouldn't have used that word. There probably is a different word I should have used. Proselytizing, I don't know.

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But we wouldn't have, using a word like that is actually, was a mistake on my part, because what

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I'm doing is I'm reading kind of a present, a present idea that has a lot attached to it into something that, into the past, where Columbus wouldn't have thought of it the same way that we do now.

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Columbus was deeply inspired by the adventures of Marco Polo. All Europeans knew trade from the Far East was treacherous.

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If a European wanted silk, he or she would have to finance a trip around either the Horn of Africa or a voyage through Islamic lands.

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Remember, the Crusades were still going on at the point, and at that point, and Catholic -Islamic relations were hostile.

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Columbus wanted to make wealth for the church by trading with the Far East and thereby finance a final crusade to once and for all end

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Islamic terrorism. And again, see, I'm still doing the same. I can't do this.

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I shouldn't have done this. And now this is before I even, I didn't even have an undergrad at this. I don't even know how.

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This was 11 years ago. So I would have been 21 years old, I guess. But yeah,

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I wouldn't have, everything, I'm agreeing with everything I said at that point, except I wouldn't be talking about it in those terms, terrorism, necessarily.

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It's a word that we use today. It has a specific meaning. And I could say there are similarities to,

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I mean, Muslims that have been trying to take over territory have been,

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I guess you could use that word. They've been, there is a thread that runs through history that is very similar.

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Muslims have been doing, the aggressive ones have been, jihadists, we'll say, were doing what they were doing then.

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And it's the same thing that many of them are doing now. Just look at what just happened in Afghanistan and some of the things that have happened in the fallout to that.

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Sadly, we're still reaping the consequences of this shortcoming. Okay, so this is in a book called

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Christopher Columbus, the Catholic. What is not commonly known is that the growing power of the followers of Muhammad had closed the normal pathway from Europe to the

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Orient in God's providence. There's that word again. This is what occasioned the search for another way to the

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Indies. Most historians claim that this was the dominant motive for Columbus going

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West so that the wealth of the East might be found. The book of prophecies written by Columbus shows the opposite.

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Commercial interests were certainly prominent in the minds of others, but Columbus had deeper spiritual interests at heart.

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It was surely part of the God's mysterious design that Columbus should have planted the true faith in the new world at the time that Islam was overrunning

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Africa, the Near East, and was being driven out of Southern Europe. So, proselytizing.

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There was a goal in his mind that this is part of God's plan. He wants to save the world.

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Now, in Columbus's idea, that was a Roman Catholic church at that time. He wants everyone to be part of this true church. So, I'm gonna help make that happen.

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I'm gonna go to the new world and make that happen. And of course, what Columbus didn't realize is that a reformation was about to happen.

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And not only would it be Catholics, but it would be Protestants also coming to the new world. Columbus was also hoping to convert the

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Far East to Christianity through evangelism and thereby gain allies by which to resist the Islamic Jihad. In a letter to the

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Pope, Alexander VI, he said, I trust that by God's help, I may spread the holy name and gospel of Jesus Christ as widely as possible.

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And so, I referenced David Barton here. I probably wouldn't be doing that now either as much. Because, and David, well,

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I'm not gonna go down that rabbit trail right now. But David Barton thinks very highly of Christopher Columbus.

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So, there's that. I just, I referenced that 11 years ago. Like I said, I don't think I'd be referencing that now.

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But let's keep going here. When Columbus first set foot in the West Indies, he actually thought he had made it to the

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Far East as evidenced by the fact that some people still call Native Americans Indians. The question is, why would

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Columbus steal from and subjugate people he wanted to trade an alliance with? The question is, he didn't.

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Despite the Hollywood actors and actresses, what they'd have you believe is evidenced by this year's Reconsider Columbus Day campaign.

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So, this was happening for a while. It was 11 years ago. There was a Reconsider Columbus Day campaign with all these Hollywood actors and actresses got together to say, don't do this.

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Don't celebrate Columbus. The ugly truth is, the great explorer never participated in the actions of the conquistadors.

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Tommy DeSeno shed some light in this article, The Truth About Christopher Columbus. DeSeno introduces us to the source of the confusion named

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Francisco de Babadilla, who lied about Columbus in order to gain the job as governor of Hispaniola.

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In 1500, the queen and queen sent him to North America to investigate claims that Columbus wasn't being fair to the

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European settlers, which means Columbus was protecting the Indians. So, de Babadilla came here and in just a few short days, did his investigation with no telephones or motorized vehicles to help him and promptly arrested

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Columbus and his brothers for Indian mistreatment and sent them back to Spain for a trial. Oh, and he also appointed himself governor.

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So, it was a coup for power and that's what was going on. Now, look, I'll be honest with you,

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I haven't read deeply into this. I pulled this from an article 11 years ago. I'm very curious tomorrow to talk with an expert on Columbus about this stuff, because I'm sure

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Columbus probably, well, I shouldn't say I'm sure, but I suspect there's probably some truth to maybe

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Columbus was mistreating the natives. I could be wrong, I don't know. But if anything, this is the complexity of history.

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We are relying on sources. When your source is from someone who was seeking their own position at the expense of Columbus's, you have to think about it.

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You have to wonder, you have to take it with a grain of salt. And that's what I'm doing here, and I still do that. We have to take this with a grain of salt.

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We can't just accept what was said hook, line, and sinker. And by the way, I will say this, if that's true, if Columbus went back to stand trial for mistreatment of the natives, what does that say about Europe?

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What does that say about the country that sent

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Columbus? What does that say about Spain? Were they just out to mistreat the

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Native Americans to make them slaves? Because if Columbus was mistreating them, and if there was even the accusation of it, he's going to stand trial for it.

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I'm just saying, this undercuts everything. It was two years before that Columbus was able to be reinstituted.

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I can say the word. It was two years before Columbus was able to be reinstated as governor again.

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Regarding the allegations made against Columbus in reference to the slave trade, DeSeno writes, one of his boats crashed in Haiti.

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He had no room for 39 men, so he started a colony there. Columbus came back a few years later to find that the

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Taino Indians killed all of them and left them where they fell. Columbus went to war with the Tainos and took 500 of them as prisoners of war, not slaves.

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They were released after the war. Now, throughout human history, when something like this takes place and there's a war, even in the

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Old Testament, you find this, there's a mercy in taking someone as a slave at times, rather than killing them.

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That's the alternative, right? So again, we can't honor hardly any culture of the past if we make the standard, well, you went to war and you took slaves.

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I mean, that was pretty standard in the ancient world up until actually pretty recent. If Columbus wasn't guilty of slavery or Indian mistreatment, surely he must have at least been a land grabber, right?

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Aren't all Europeans? Once again, syndicated blogger, Alexander Marriott asked the question, what was there to steal?

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The land was not in use, evidenced by the pathetic level of any kind of progress, intellectual or material, on the part of nearly all

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Indian tribes, despite thousands of years in lands of great plenty and separated from other people of the world who could have potentially meddled with them.

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So here's something, I'd like to say this. I don't think I quote a guy like this now, 11 years after writing this, because I actually think there probably is some, if you're descended from a

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Native American tribe, I think there is something to be proud of there. There is something to conserve. There's good things about that.

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There's true and valuable things about that. It doesn't mean that I think that it's like some of the naturalists today don't ever, there should be no interaction whatsoever because we're gonna corrupt the noble savage, this

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Rousseauian idea. Then no, there's no noble savage. Everyone has sin in their hearts, right?

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And so one of the things I think about Columbus and what came after him really is that there were very useful things that were brought, technologies that really helped even the

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Native Americans. They even were helped by some of these technologies that were brought to the new world. And so that's what

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I would say. That's how I'd say it today. I wouldn't start saying how pathetic it is that they didn't have wheels and they didn't have cars and they didn't have all the things the

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West has brought. No, I mean, I'm not gonna, most of mankind lived on a level of subsistence all over the world for thousands of years.

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And yeah, there were empires that they made progress, and technological progress along the way.

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But this is pretty common. This isn't like out of the ordinary. The West is an anomaly.

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The West is an anomaly. Okay, so what was the legacy of Christopher Columbus?

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In a letter to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, actually I skipped something here, right? I just quote someone else who basically makes the same point.

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Prior to 1492, the United States was sparsely inhabited, unused and underdeveloped. And even if you see that map of, here's where all the tribes were.

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It wasn't like today where they had thousands of people spreading across those whole regions.

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These were their hunting grounds. These are places they migrated. A lot of land was open to be colonized.

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There's a difference between colonization and immigration, very different.

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So colonization, when someone goes in, they're going there to colonize. There's nothing holding them back from it really, generally.

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I understand there's violence, colonization efforts, et cetera.

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But the kind of colonization Columbus was doing, they had the intent of we're gonna live side by side with these people.

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We're going to be sharing Christianity with them. So what is the legacy of Christopher Columbus?

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In a letter to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella contained in the book of prophecies authored by the man himself in 1502, Columbus makes this assertion.

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At this time, I have seen and put in study to look into all the scriptures which are Lord open to my understanding.

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I could sense his hand upon me so that it became clear to me that it was feasible to navigate from here to the Indies. And he gave me the will to execute the idea.

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I have already said that for the execution of the enterprise of the Indies, neither reason nor mathematics nor world's maps were profitable to me.

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Rather, the prophecy of Isaiah was completely fulfilled. And this is what I wish to report here for the consideration of your

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Highnesses. Columbus was a man of virtue, a hero, if you will, with noble goals and a faith in God.

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He sailed the uncharted ocean depths, discovering what today we call home and opening the possibility for Western civilization to make inroads in a new continent.

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Then I have a whole section here where I talk about Western civilization. I talk about the science, technology, industry, capitalism, chivalry, etiquette, fine arts, law, high morals, all of this stuff that came.

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I compare it to the Aztecs and kind of what they were doing, which we would think of today even very barbaric.

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And there were times in which the Europeans abandoned the civilized standards that they should have known in dealing with the natives.

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And the problem wasn't that those Europeans had too much civilization. The problem was they had too little. So I defend

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Western civilization. So there you go. There is my assessment from 11 years ago of Christopher Columbus with me making some several alterations today, because I don't write quite the same way.

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I probably wouldn't have included all the same things. But all that to say, Christopher Columbus is someone that we can look back to and draw inspiration from for his bravery, his exploration, to some extent his motivation.

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There, he had a higher purpose about him. We need people that are like that today, that have a higher noble purpose, that see

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God's hand at work and wanna be part of whatever God's doing. Even if they're a little misguided on what that is, possibly, just the sense that there is a plan, and it's a noble one, and we wanna do the right thing here, that's gone.

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People are so out for themselves today. And we could use some men like Columbus, who had a higher purpose there.

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Not saying he wasn't out for himself at all, but there's clearly something that, there's a goal he's trying to achieve.

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So I wanted to put that out there about Christopher Columbus on Columbus Day for all of you as you're possibly having some conversations about the significance of this day.

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Maybe wondering why we have it. Maybe wondering why don't we celebrate Indigenous Persons Day? Well, this is the reason.

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There wasn't an Indigenous Persons Day before Columbus Day. That's a fairly new, and maybe you can have one, but on another day, this is

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Columbus Day. So that's my two cents on Christopher Columbus. And whatever you're doing today, whether it's apple picking or,

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I don't know, whatever you do on Columbus Day, hope you're having a good time. Hope you're enjoying the beauty around you. It's a beautiful day where I am.

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God bless. More coming later this week. I might not have a podcast tomorrow. I'm gonna be on the road just about all day, except for the interview that I'm doing with an expert on Columbus.

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I'm gonna find out. I'm gonna find out if I was right on some of this stuff. But I think