Word: columbus
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MARC CARMICHAEL (D) District 2 (E. Central--Muncie; Anderson; Columbus...
Christopher Columbus receives more than his share of bad press nowadays, a recent example being David Brown's screed in Saturday's Crimson, I would like to invite your readers to consider some facts which will make possible a more objective assessment of Columbus and his achievement...
...human history-including, students take note, the division of labor which allows some people to devote their time entirely to academic pursuits (and to bashing Western civilization). Contrast these benificent achievements with the age-old sorrows of malnutrition, disease, and back-breaking physical drudgery that plagued the peoples Columbus encountered in the New World. On the basis of physical quality of life alone, we should feel solemn gratitude to Columbus for enabling Western civilization to spread the benefits of its scientific prowess to this half of the globe...
...consider also the moral side--in particular, the irony of judging Columbus' and the Europeans' faults, including plunder and slavery, by a moral criterion developed in the West--the sanctity of human life and evinced by their practice of slavery, intertribal warfare, and even human sacrifice. It is Western civilization--specifically, its values of reason, individualism, and freedom--which has made the greatest progress in history in eradicating such horrors from the face of the earth. Ear from smearing the man who introduced such a life-giving culture to this hemisphere with fatuous invocations of Hitler and Stalin. We should...
...take a look at that editorial page again. David W. Brown refers to Christopher Columbus as a "genocidal madman" (Dartboard, Oct. 12). Columbus massacred Arawaks because of his societal and personal beliefs, not because of mental illness. The term "mad" (not a medical term, but a common expression for "mentally ill") is arbitrarily applied to a variety of criminals, from terrorists to tyrants. This stigmatizes mental illness and inhibits our understanding of the individual's motivation. Many people would rather not believe that sane people can and do commit heinous acts. The majority of the mentally ill, as with most...