4 thoughts on “Columbus Day”

1. I think it’s safe to say that the guy at The Oatmeal is not a fan.

   1. Blaming Columbus for the smallpox epidemic (due to germs that would have spread soon after *any* moderate-scale contact from the Old World) and for an increased African slave trade (due indirectly to a fall in gold prices that at worst was slightly accelerated by Columbus’ awful methods of collecting that gold) was excessive.

      But I’m damning him with faint praise here. So he wasn’t morally responsible for millions of deaths and enslavements and rapes, just thousands or maybe only hundreds. Yay?

      If you don’t like the PC brigades, don’t cut off your nose to spite them; failing to admit when “politically correct” overlaps with “correct” just makes it harder to credibly argue the cases when it doesn’t.

   2. I was pretty surprised and dismayed by the story he presented there. Until I got to the end and saw that it was all cited from Zinn. Then I understood.

      1. Well, it’s not as awful as Zinn describes, but Columbus was no saint.

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