WHAT YOU THINK COLUMBO DO/WHEN HE COME TO AMERICA IN 1492?/HE SAY TO POCAHONTAS, "DIE, INFERNAL WRETCH, SO THAT I MAY HAVE REAL ESTATE"/DAT'S-A WHY WE SAY, COLUMBUS DAY -- [piano riff] -- FUCK YOU. Like every other rightwing jerkoff wishing to flash his political-incorrectness cred, the Ole Perfesser takes this occasion to pump the Ole Colonizer. He quotes some other guy who mourns Columbus' era, when men were men and indigenous peoples were subhuman. Among the innovations of the Columbian age: "...the Church, purged and chastened by the Protestant Reformation, puts her house in order; new ideas flare up throughout Italy, France, Germany and the northern nations; faith in God revives and the human spirit is renewed..." Thus Columbus gets credit for both the Inquisition and the Renaissance. No wonder they gave him a parade!

Even better is the Washington Times op-ed by Edward Hudgins, billed as "executive director of the Objectivist Center and its Atlas Society, which celebrate rational individualists" (you know, every time the WashTimes goes on about some Democratic "extremist," I think of this sort of byline). Hudgins admits that the injuns got a raw deal, but... well, let him tell it:

The clash between the cultures of pre-Columbian natives and European immigrants certainly produced injustices for natives. But it would have been unjust for those natives to expect the immigrants to hold themselves to the level of primitive cultures and beliefs. The true long-term tragedy is that so many descendants of the pre-Columbian peoples in North America ended up on reservations rather than integrated into a society that offers opportunities for each individual to excel.

Yeah, while it was kind of a drag that so many of these guys wound up enslaved or dead -- though what could you expect? Not enslaving and killing them was a cultural concept foreign to white men -- the real tragedy is reservations.

Fuck Columbus. If it weren't for him I'd have government healthcare and seven weeks' vacation a year now.