Columbus Day, which this year marks the 528th
anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America, is one week from today.
Some people ask, how can it be said that Columbus
discovered a place in which people were already living and who thus knew about
its existence before his arrival, and whose ancestors knew about its existence for
millennia?
The answer is that Columbus discovered America by
virtue of being the first member of Western Civilization to learn of its
existence and make its existence known for the first time to all the other members of
Western Civilization.
Membership in Western Civilization is achieved by anyone
who makes it his intellectual home and sees the world from that perspective.
This includes descendants of the natives Columbus
encountered, who have been educated and integrated into Western Civilization. The
descendants of savages are routinely members of Western Civilization. Indeed, we
are all ultimately descended from savages.
Western Civilization is a body of ideas and values,
capable of being accepted and made their own by people everywhere, irrespective
of race or ethnicity.
From the perspective of
intellectual and cultural content, Western civilization represents an
understanding and acceptance of the following: the laws of logic; the concept
of causality and, consequently, of a universe ruled by natural laws
intelligible to man;
on these foundations, the
whole known corpus of the laws of mathematics and science; the individual's
self-responsibility based on his free will to choose between good and evil; the
value of man above all other species on the basis of his unique possession of
the power of reason;
the value and competence of
the individual human being and his corollary possession of individual rights,
among them the right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness;
the need for limited government and for the individual's freedom from the
state;
on this entire preceding
foundation, the validity of capitalism, with its unprecedented and continuing
economic development in terms of division of labor, technological progress,
capital accumulation, and rising living standards;
in addition, the importance
of visual arts and literature depicting man as capable of facing the world with
confidence in his power to succeed, and music featuring harmony and melody.
Wherever the intellectual substance of Western
civilization is known, its imparting to the minds of students is virtually coextensive
with the process of education.
For the intellectual substance of Western civilization
is nothing other than the highest level of knowledge attained anywhere on
earth, in virtually every aspect of every field.
If the purpose of education is to impart knowledge,
then its purpose is to impart Western Civilization.
Those who denounce Columbus are not members of Western
Civilization. They have renounced Western Civilization and fallen to the status
of the “indigenous people” Columbus encountered. In other words, they are now
savages or well on the way to savagery.
Some of them can be seen smashing windows, looting
stores, burning down buildings, and beating and killing people. The root of the
problem is a racist educational system that identifies civilization and savagery
as emanations of race, just as did the racists of the past.
The only difference is that today’s racists prefer savagery.
To learn more, see my essay “Contemporary Education’s Racist Road to Barbarism.” It’s available for 99¢ at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00P4IT3JC/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i19
