Columbus Day Celebrates Our Civilization
Posted by freedomforall 1 day, 11 hours ago to Philosophy
Excerpt:
"Battles over Columbus Day aren't really about Christopher Columbus at all -- they're about whether America should exist.
"Columbus's journey carried thousands of years of wisdom, philosophy, reason, and culture across the Atlantic into the Americas -- paving the way for the ultimate triumph of Western civilization less than three centuries later on July 4, 1776," President Donald Trump says in his Columbus Day proclamation.
Yet that's why the holiday has so many enemies.
Unlike progressive movements of decades past, today's ideological left doesn't particularly want to lay claim to America's heritage.
Even the Communist Party USA once made an effort to brand its radical creed as 20th-century "Americanism."
Karl Marx himself saw the spread of bourgeois civilization as inevitable and even necessary for creating the conditions of worldwide class revolution.
That civilization is what opponents of Columbus Day reject.
Columbus extended the horizons of Western civilization, which is what the holiday in his name recognizes.
...
He opened the way not only for Europeans and Christians like himself but ultimately for people of every land and religion to seek freedom, safety and opportunity in a New World without the class constraints and ancient hatreds of the Old World.
...
Columbus was an exemplar of much that is best in our character.
He was the first and, in many ways, an archetypal American, an enterprising immigrant who risked everything for a new hope, who not only set out to improve his family's lot in life but understood his work as service to God."
"Battles over Columbus Day aren't really about Christopher Columbus at all -- they're about whether America should exist.
"Columbus's journey carried thousands of years of wisdom, philosophy, reason, and culture across the Atlantic into the Americas -- paving the way for the ultimate triumph of Western civilization less than three centuries later on July 4, 1776," President Donald Trump says in his Columbus Day proclamation.
Yet that's why the holiday has so many enemies.
Unlike progressive movements of decades past, today's ideological left doesn't particularly want to lay claim to America's heritage.
Even the Communist Party USA once made an effort to brand its radical creed as 20th-century "Americanism."
Karl Marx himself saw the spread of bourgeois civilization as inevitable and even necessary for creating the conditions of worldwide class revolution.
That civilization is what opponents of Columbus Day reject.
Columbus extended the horizons of Western civilization, which is what the holiday in his name recognizes.
...
He opened the way not only for Europeans and Christians like himself but ultimately for people of every land and religion to seek freedom, safety and opportunity in a New World without the class constraints and ancient hatreds of the Old World.
...
Columbus was an exemplar of much that is best in our character.
He was the first and, in many ways, an archetypal American, an enterprising immigrant who risked everything for a new hope, who not only set out to improve his family's lot in life but understood his work as service to God."
