God, Gold And Glory

Some politically incorrect thoughts about Columbus Day. And an oldie from James Bennett on the origin of ant-Western thought among westerners that prevails in academia, in which he talks about the other Italian we should honor:

During the 19th century, Columbus was reinvented by Washington Irving and his successors as a sort of Yankee visionary entrepreneur before his time. His specific roots in time, space, and culture as a Genoese in the service of Spanish monarchs was downplayed; what was celebrated was his seeming prescience and capacity for self-reinvention.

In fact Columbus did have some such characteristics; entrepreneurism is often a leap into the unknown, and he was neither the first nor the last to set out to seek one thing and discover another, nor to venture on the basis of mistaken calculations and assumptions. There was, it is true, a certain Enron-like quality to his mileage calculations.

Subsequently, this useful narrative was seized upon and expanded by Catholic immigrant communities eager to demonstrate that Catholicism was not inconsistent with being American. Italian immigrant groups found Columbus a particularly appealing figure; here was an Italian Catholic already elevated to heroic status by the Americans they sought to join. Columbus Day became established as an American holiday, but for reasons and with symbolism quite different from those for which it is celebrated in Latin America..

Now, of course, Columbus Day is under attack as a holiday in the United States by the forces of political correctness. This is primarily an effect of the Calvinist Puritan roots of American progressivism. Just as Calvinists believed in the centrality of the depravity of man, with the exception of a miniscule contingent of the Elect of God, their secularized descendants believe in the depravity and cursedness of Western civilization, with their own enlightened selves in the role of the Elect.

I do not particularly sympathize with the demonization of Columbus Day by the politically correct, although I do not think the injustices suffered by our Siberian-American fellow immigrants should be glossed over. However, I think Columbus Day should be reconsidered as a U.S. holiday for a different reason. I am fundamentally in agreement with the Hispanosphere nationalists on one point: Columbus’s voyage was very specifically the initiation of the contact between Spain and Spanish America. Neither the settlement of Brazil nor of English-speaking North America were direct consequences of Columbus’s voyages, and would probably have happened had Columbus never returned with the news of his landing.

Siberian-Americans. There are no natives, or most of us born here are. Can’t have it both ways.

6 thoughts on “God, Gold And Glory”

  1. Adm. Samuel Eliot Morison was one of the great historians of the 20th Century.

    His “The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 (1921)” is a classic on the maritime entrepreneurial boom following the Revolution that laid the foundation for the United States becoming a world power.

  2. Ah — the Puritans. During the brief period when they ruled England (1649-1660), they outlawed THEATER. That’s right, in the country that gave us Shakespeare, it was illegal to perform his works — and those of any other playwright — for a decade.

  3. Yes, Chuck. And what is one of the bluest of the blue regions in the country, the most “progressive” and “liberal”?

    New England. You know, the place that the Puritans settled? They just found new witches.

  4. Actually, Columbus is not famous for discovering America.

    He is famous because he was the last person to discover America.

  5. Oh, great; John Cabot. Again.

    Cabot made a single landfall on the North American continent out of three tries. Trip #1 apparently never even sighted land. Trip #2 was the “discovery” voyage, during which Cabot ‘is only reported to have landed once during the expedition and did not advance “beyond the shooting distance of a crossbow”‘ (from the landing point).

    As for Trip #3, “Nothing more has been found (or at least published) that relates to this expedition and it has often been assumed from this that Cabot’s fleet was lost at sea.” (Wiki)

    Later result of all this work: nothing. Not one single thing.

    The first real claim of English sovereignty came from Humphrey Gilbert, who made landfall at St. John’s, Newfoundland 1583, nearly a century later.

    The first permanent English settlement in North America was in 1607, over a century after Cabot disappeared (or returned to complete obscurity, take your pick).

    Said colonies were largely motivated by fears of religious persecution & oppression fueled by the internecine wars during the reigns of Henry VIII, Mary, and Elizabeth. James I didn’t help any.

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