Quote:
Originally Posted by Raev
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P.P.S. Danth, Columbus had his flaws but he has been outrageously demonized
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I agree. He was arrogant and bullheaded and wrong in many of his opinions, but I do not regard him or other explorers/colonizers of that era as culpable for things such as how diseases they did not understand wiped out the majority of the american population (you'll note I made no mention at all of the natives, in those two posts). They're just lucky it was mostly one-way and they didn't take some American disease home with them to wipe out 90% of Europe. It could just as easily have happened that way and if it had, we wouldn't be here to curse them for it.
I ain't throwing out history or burning any books or condemning people's memory because they don't fit today's notions of morality, either. Don't lump me with that bunch, they tick me off. They're nothing more than a modern equivalent of the Roman Damnatio Memoriae, just as politically-motivated, and just as worthless. Instead I merely prefer seeing history as it is versus the 1950's-style tendency to want to make everyone into a faultless saint. I can call Columbus a jerk and still recognize the man's enormous effect on the course of civilization.
Danth