Columbus Day is Democracy, and a challenge to the tyranny we face
The drive to erase Columbus Day is an example of the real threat of true racism that we face in America, and a challenge to our Democracy. Columbus was a hero who should be celebrated for bringing a higher level of civilization to North America. And those who claim to be the victims of his racism are in fact hypocrites who engaged in violence and brutality when they came to North America, destroying the indigenous population of Neanderthals who were here already. Columbus is just one explorer in a series of events in World History and because of his sacrifices, this country owes him a great debt
Listen to columnist Ray Hanania talk about Christopher Columbus and the hypocrisy of the attacks on Columbus on The Chicago Way Podcast with John Kass by clicking here.
By Ray Hanania
As a Democracy, America is built on many principles. One of the most important is the principle that Majority Rules.
Provisions exist to prevent the “Tyranny of the Majority,” but the fundamental basis for everything we do in voting and governance is based on a majority to reach decisions, take actions or elect representatives. Without Majority Rule, we are not a Democracy.
So, why are we allowing a small group of violent thugs, an insane minority of fanatics, to disparage and slander this country? Why are we allowing them to bully the majority and change our lives?
Why is the majority being forced to surrender to the minority? I am not speaking about “minority” in the qualitative terms of ethnicity, religion or national origin. I am speaking of it in quantitative terms on which Majority Rule is based.
We allow an insane minority to impose their selfish and distorted interests to hold our just principles hostage, and to violate laws when it is convenient for their “causes.”
Over the past few years, a small group of loudmouthed and violent fanatics have begun to bully the country into a submission of orchestrated shame.
Much of this injustice is done in the name of twisted morality. George Floyd was a drugged-up thief who was the victim of his own making, though unjustly treated. Instead of holding the officers accountable for their crimes, they went to great extremes to blame the entire nation.
That movement of hatred fueled a rampage of violence destroying businesses and injuring thousands across the country. There was no “George Floyd” justice for the victims whose stores were looted, burned down, or for the many individuals who were seriously injured and in some cases killed.
These protestors hide behind allegations of “racism” and yet they stereotype everyone else. They distort history by narrowly focusing on events that favor their claims and bully everyone else into silence.
It’s time that the Majority stand up and fight back. And for me, celebrating Columbus Day is the front line of this new war.
Christopher Columbus isn’t the symbol of the European destruction of Native American or “indigenous” populations. He is the person who helped begin the process of bringing greater civilization to this continent. Columbus represented but one period in human history in which population change took place.
Who is really “indigenous?”
The fanatics start their history when it is convenient to their cause. It didn’t start with the Native Americans.
As it turns out, every society has a “Christopher Columbus” who brought their beliefs and “civilization” by conquest to others. The Comanches were among the most ruthless in destroying other societies.
Long before Columbus arrived on the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria in 1492, “Native American” tribes had pillaged and destroyed other indigenous populations that were here before them. Evidence shows Neanderthals were here more than 130,000 years ago, destroyed by a migration of Homo Sapiens from Africa and the Middle East who settled America in their place.
Before you start destroying statues of Columbus, tear down the monuments of Native Americans, a culture of brutal tribes who were as vicious as the settlers who followed their arrival. What’s the difference between Columbus, who came to America on a boat, and the Native Americans, who crossed the great plaines on horseback?
We all learned about how Hernan Cortez landed in Mexico and conquered the Aztecs in the 16th Century. But no one talks about how the Aztecs brought their bloodied and cannibalistic traditions of ripping out their victims’ hearts atop spectacularly built pyramids that today’s tourists visit in awe, and ignorance.
The Aztecs arrived 300 years before and destroyed the “indigenous” populations who were there before them in the 13th Century.
Slavery flourished in Africa long before it became transcontinental and spread to Europe and then America. Slavery was invented by every conqueror, including among the Black civilizations in West and Central Africa. Slavery is wrong. But don’t falsely blame it on one people in order to give yourself gain and close your eyes to your own transgressions.
These hypocrites want to begin their narrative not when they committed worldly transgression. They start their moral indignation on their selfish timeline.
They tear down statues of others like Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee and Christopher Columbus because it suits their hypocritical agendas that are often built on narrow historical distortions.
They tear them down because their movement is based on a hypocritical lie that is blind to their own violent histories.
For me, “Columbus Day” represents “Freedom Day from Hypocrisy and Lies.” Let’s hold every ethnic and racial group to the same standard of justice and principle, which by the way is also one of the foundations of Democracy that the fanatics are seeking to change.
(Ray Hanania is an award winning former Chicago City Hall reporter and political columnist. His mainstream political columns are published in the Southwest News Newspaper Group in the Des Plaines Valley News, Southwest News-Herald, The Regional News, The Reporter Newspapers. His Middle East columns are published in the Arab News. For more information on Ray Hanania visit www.Hanania.com or email him at rghanania@gmail.com.) SUBSCRIBE BELOW
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Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
Email Ray Hanania at rghanania@gmail.com.
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