Posted by
EWRoss on Monday, October 12, 2009 7:00:00 AM
Judging from the way elementary and high school history books treat Christopher
Columbus these days, he was a pretty bad guy. Watching the formerly-mainstream
media you'd get the idea that for every Columbus Day parade there's a
demonstration protesting the holiday.
We have to wonder how much longer
we'll have a national holiday named after Columbus
before Congress passes a bill changing it. Now that he's won the Nobel Peace
Prize, I'm sure there are plenty of Democrats who would like to make it Barack
Obama day. With their majorities in Congress they could pass such a bill
without a single Republican vote. Of course, the president is too smart to sign
it, so we'll either have to stick with Columbus
or find someone else.
Columbus
wasn't the first European to discover America anyway. Leif Ericson is widely regarded as the
first European to have landed in North America 492 years before Columbus. But we already
have a Leif Ericson Day,
and I don't think we want to name a national holiday after a Norwegian? It
might give the Norwegian Nobel Committee the wrong idea. Then there's the claim
that Henry Sinclair
of the Knights Templar
came to America
in the 1300s. Given that many of his fellow knights were burned at the stake as
heretics, you know what textbook writers would do with that. How about the
ice-age Europeans that some believe crossed the Atlantic along the ice shelf
between Europe and North America?
Unfortunately GEICO already has the rights to their image locked up tight. Oh
well, I guess we'll have to stick with poor old Columbus for the time being.
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