Preemptive Strike: How to Defend Columbus Day From Social Grievance Mobs

Washington, D.C. – Columbus Day will soon be upon us. With it will come a slew of denunciations of white male privilege and other notions popular among those who think the existence of the United States to be a blight on the evolution of mankind.

It's utter rot, of course. America has done more to raise global living standards, secure peace and protect the poor and downtrodden around the world than any nation in world history. None of this has occurred without error – and the crimes against humanity sometimes countenanced here should never be forgotten. On balance, however, far more has been good than evil.

This perspective has been trampled upon, even at the highest levels of society. In his 2021 Columbus Day proclamation, President Joe Biden – rather than laud the accomplishments of the legendary explorer – drew attention to what he said was “the painful history of wrongs and atrocities that many European explorers inflicted on Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities.”

That may have gone over well in the faculty lounges at Harvard and Yale and in the newsrooms of the major networks but, to the rest of America, it's an affront to a proud legacy. Despite what some academics and The New York Times might say, the total of the nation's accomplishments is more than a “wave of devastation,” as Biden proclaimed. “Violence perpetrated against Native communities, displacement and theft of tribal homelands, the introduction and spread of disease, and more.”

What nonsense. The man who said he sought the presidency to unite a divided nation has instead split it into pieces. The country is fractured into blocs, pushed into separate and distant corners by his rhetoric that turns brother against brother.

Most Americans acknowledge our faults and do not need to have them thrust into the front and center of the national conversation, the public school curriculum and the decisions made in corporate board rooms from New York to California. We are bending toward breaking under the weight of the presumption we are passive about the various “-isms” for which the social justice grievance mobs demand we all atone.

The demand for social and economic reparations for past injustices is a clever and unfortunately effective strategy. As George Orwell pointed out many times, this is how the collectivists engaged in attempts at re-education come at us. “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,” he wrote in 1984, his literary masterpiece depicting life in a dystopian future overseen by “Big Brother.”

Those who would control the future here long ago singled out Columbus Day for special consideration. It's now a trigger for a social justice conversation evocative of peaceful indigenous peoples massacred by white, empire-building Europeans. In that way it helps, among elites anyway, to justify the rage expressed during the riots of 2020 while ignoring the human cost as well as the economic and social consequences of the destruction and death they brought.

Columbus is worth celebrating. His explorations culminated in the eventual founding of America. If you believe the traditional narrative – that he rather than the Freemasons or the Vikings or other Europeans “discovered” America – then he and his crew were, after a fashion, the first immigrants to arrive in this hemisphere. Like others who followed, his interests were primarily commercial. Others came seeking religious freedom. Some wanted a chance to start anew, escaping their past to live under a new name. Others simply wanted a better life than they had, a reality that continues today. And some, we must never forget, were brought here without their consent, treated as property rather than people.

The latter is an offense that must never be forgotten but also cannot be the central fact of America's history as some would now like it to be. We are a nation of immigrants. Over the centuries those born elsewhere who ended up here have helped sustain the greatest, freest, most prosperous country mankind has ever known. Rather than abolish or rename Columbus Day, use it to celebrate the accomplishments immigrants have made to our nation.

Most people emigrating to the United States want the chance at a better life, with higher living standards than they enjoyed in the country from which they came. They often leave places where they face insurmountable religious, economic, geographic, political, linguistic or ethnic barriers keeping them from success. Here, as they seek their share of the American Dream, they contribute mightily to the success of us all. The Kaufmann Foundation estimates that in the early part of the current century, almost 350 out of every 100,000 immigrants created a new business each month. There's not a politician extent that would not like to claim responsibility for a record as impressive as that.

Let's welcome them with open arms and applaud their courage. Who among us would leave behind everything we know for a new life in another country? Only the bravest among us would take on such an adventure. Immigrants have made the United States a stronger, richer, healthier and better place. Honor them on Columbus Day. Salute their courage. Applaud that they are seeking a better life, if not for themselves than for their children and grandchildren.

The country we are today was not stolen from the people Columbus encountered when he came ashore off the Santa Maria. That severely distorted view of history, peddled by activists who refer to his holiday as “Indigenous Peoples' Day,” is a lie.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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