Hail Columbus For Opening Our World

Three "average" citizens appearing in a skit on a popular late night talk show last week did not know in what year Christopher Columbus first made landfall in the New World. For us, this posed a conundrum: is it better to be forgotten by the ignorant or reviled by revisionists? Columbus seems to be getting his share of both.

For years Columbus was hailed as a visionary who discovered the lands of the Western Hemisphere and opened them for future generations. It is not difficult to find arguments to support this view. Simply put, without Columbus the world as we know it would not exist today.

A diametrically opposed school of thought holds Columbus responsible for all the ills that man has brought upon what was once an unspoiled, Eden-like paradise that stretched nearly from the North to the South Poles. Had Europeans never set foot on this idyllic landscape, so the theory maintains, the indigenous people would have flourished in harmony with each other, spared the baleful influence of Western civilization.

We hate to be the instrument of anyone's disillusionment, but in fairness, we must point out that archaeological evidence and the journals of numerous explorers strongly indicate that peace and harmony were far from the norm in the pre-Columbian Americas. The Incas, Mayans and Aztecs waged war against their neighbors and among each other quite regularly. More than 300 years later, when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set out to explore the northern reaches of the territory that then President Thomas Jefferson had acquired from France, they found that some tribes of Native Americans led relatively peaceful lives, while others had established cultures in which war was the primary reason for their existence. Peace and war existed side by side.

What has come out of the new world, whether by intentional intellectual pursuit or through inadvertence and serendipity, has often served to make the lives of all mankind easier and better. Americans invented sewing machines, cotton gins and the electric light bulb. An American doctor developed rubber gloves, without which modern medicine and surgery would be impossible, to save the hands of a nurse he loved. Doubtless our readers can supply their own examples.

Whether one admires or deplores him, that Columbus opened the door to a new world is undeniable. Those who came after him pushed the door open wider and wider with each succeeding generation. What those succeeding generations did with the new world they immigrated to or were born in has proved to be both good and bad. Everything has the deficiencies of its qualities. We believe, though, that the good far outweighs the bad. The sailor from Genoa gave us the world we know today. Columbus Day celebrations will soon be upon us. We urge our readers to join in whatever celebrations or observances are taking place in the neighborhoods where they live. Columbus stands as an example of one who followed his beliefs and never lost the courage of his convictions. In that respect, we honor his memory and thank him for his willingness to seek a newer world.