Celebrating Columbus Day

"Thanks be to God," says the Admiral, "the air is soft as in April in Seville, and it is a pleasure to be in it, so fragrant it is." ~ October 8, 1492

It's Columbus Day! And once again, while many celebrate...

WKTV: It's Columbus Day and that means students across the nation are off from school for the day. Banks and government offices are also closed.

In the Big Apple, the Columbus Day Parade kicks off on Fifth Avenue at 44th Street... Parades, floats, bands and more than 100 groups will participate.

The Columbus Citizens Foundation says the parade is the largest celebration of Italian-American culture in the world.

...there are those who invariably disregard its significance, including Obama and his anti-colonialist views...

FoxNewsRadio: President Obama marked Columbus Day by issuing a proclamation that reflects “on the tragic burdens tribal communities bore” in the years that followed the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus.

“When the explorers laid anchor in the Bahamas, they met indigenous peoples who had inhabited the Western hemisphere for millennia,” Obama wrote. “As we reflect on the tragic burdens tribal communities bore in the years that followed, let us commemorate the many contributions they have made to the American experience, and let us continue to strengthen the ties that bind us today.”

Rebelpundit: While in 2010 and 2011, President Obama directed the flag be flown “in honor of Christopher Columbus”, the President stealthily halted this practice on today’s Columbus Day observations. For the first time since the creation of Columbus Day, a President has directed the flag be flown on Columbus Day “in honor of our diverse history and all who have contributed to shaping this Nation” rather than in honor of Christopher Columbus.

Nonetheless, as Michael Berliner signifies, Columbus Day is indeed a time to celebrate:

Did Columbus "discover" America? Yes—in every important respect. This does not mean that no human eye had been cast on America before Columbus arrived. It does mean that Columbus brought America to the attention of the civilized world, i.e., to the growing, scientific civilizations of Western Europe. The result, ultimately, was the United States of America. It was Columbus' discovery for Western Europe that led to the influx of ideas and people on which this nation was founded—and on which it still rests. The opening of America brought the ideas and achievements of Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and the thousands of thinkers, writers, and inventors who followed.

Prior to 1492, what is now the United States was sparsely inhabited, unused, and undeveloped. The inhabitants were primarily hunter/gatherers, wandering across the land, living from hand to mouth and from day to day. There was virtually no change, no growth for thousands of years. With rare exception, life was nasty, brutish, and short: there was no wheel, no written language, no division of labor, little agriculture and scant permanent settlement; but there were endless, bloody wars. Whatever the problems it brought, the vilified Western culture also brought enormous, undreamed-of benefits, without which most of today's Indians would be infinitely poorer or not even alive.

Columbus should be honored, for in so doing, we honor Western civilization. But the critics do not want to bestow such honor, because their real goal is to denigrate the values of Western civilization and to glorify the primitivism, mysticism, and collectivism embodied in the tribal cultures of American Indians. They decry the glorification of the West as "Eurocentrism." We should, they claim, replace our reverence for Western civilization with multi-culturalism, which regards all cultures as morally equal. In fact, they aren't.

Some cultures are better than others: a free society is better than slavery; reason is better than brute force as a way to deal with other men; productivity is better than stagnation. In fact, Western civilization stands for man at his best. It stands for the values that make human life possible: reason, science, self-reliance, individualism, ambition, productive achievement. The values of Western civilization are values for all men; they cut across gender, ethnicity, and geography. We should honor Western civilization not for the ethnocentric reason that some of us happen to have European ancestors but because it is the objectively superior culture.

...not to mention, Columbus' Christian contributions to the New World.