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.

James Bennett, on the resistance of American political culture to “progressivism:”

For decades — at a minimum, since the beginning of the Progressive Era, and arguably earlier — America had been on a course toward a more centralized society, one in which individualism as it had been understood since before the Founding — a society built on independent families living on their own properties, most of them farms — was being replaced by a different vision. The progressive vision was one of citizens as employees whose existence was mediated by negotiations among large corporations, unions, and government agencies. For such subjects, “rights” were to be a designated set of entitlements granted by those organizations.

America had gone some distance down this road by 1980, although not as far as Canada or Britain, and nowhere near as far as Germany or France, which had never been all that laissez-faire in the first place. But 1980 marked the point at which the nation reversed course. Thenceforth it would be headed in the opposite direction, toward a new vision of individualism and decentralism, driven by the computer rather than the plow.

It’s long, but worth a read.

Remembering, nine years later. It’s hard to imagine this president doing that.

…at channelling FDR? John Pitney has a theory about the president’s latest bizarre off-prompter moment:

One can only guess what the president was thinking. I’m the new Roosevelt, right? So what did he do when he was under attack? He told union guys something about a dog. But instead of tossing off some humorous line about Bo the First Canine, he blurted out a bit of witless self-pity.

It was as senseless as it was unfunny. Not even the world’s looniest dog-hater has ever accused a pooch of ignoring the Constitution and a running up a $13 trillion debt.

I like Treacher’s take, myself:

Who’s a good president? Obama’s a good president, isn’t he? Yes he is!

I certainly wouldn’t compare Obama to a dog. Dogs are capable of learning.

Well, the question is, how old is this dog, and can he learn any new tricks in time for either this election, or the next one?