Everyone knows Columbus wasn't perfect so please stop talking.
Somebody has to say it, so why not me. At first, I laughed when I read in a recent edition of The Eagle that our wonderful SG Senate was taking up - again -.... the whole "Indigenous People's Day" situation. Then I realized that this is seriously what our Student Government is spending time on, and I became really concerned. I have two gripes: (1) that instead of addressing real issues, the SG is trying to enact public policy and (2) the assertion that Columbus Day somehow is an anti-Native American holiday.
Passing a resolution in SG hardly helps to "encourage the AU community to enhance understanding of Native Americans' achievements and contribution to the United States." What's more, if this is what the senate thinks to be time well spent I suggest we disband the entire body.
Columbus Day is a national holiday, one that doesn't pretend to romanticize the man, but rather seeks to commemorate the birth of Western civilization. In an Oct. 4 press release on the Ayn Rand Institute for Individual Rights' Web site, Thomas Bowden said "Columbus Day is, at root, a celebration of the worldwide spread of Western civilization. ... Those who attack Columbus Day are attacking the distinctive values of Western civilization that America so proudly embraces - reason, science, individual rights, and capitalism."
Bowden, an analyst for the Ayn Rand Institute, admits that Columbus had faults.
"We need not evade or excuse Columbus's flaws - his religious zealotry, his enslavement and oppression of natives - to recognize that he made history by finding new territory for a civilization that would soon show mankind how to overcome the age-old scourges of slavery, war, and forced religious conversion," he said.
So can we stop it? Please. I think the future presents enough challenges to combat racism and genocide - the fights we should be fighting - instead of trying to abolish a national holiday that itself doesn't harm anyone. If we abolish Columbus Day for the atrocities to the native people, shouldn't we then abolish Independence Day since many of the people who led this nation to its independence owned slaves and caused them undue and unjust harm? Where does this liberalism run amuck end? Soon, people will be saying that brightly colored eggs, chocolate candy and a rabbit that leaves goodies for children under a holiday labeled with the dreaded "E" word is promoting Catholicism.
By the way, getting 300 signatures out of the thousands of students on campus is hardly an achievement. A monkey could get twice the amount supporting the ban of bananas in TDR if it walked around MGC and the Tavern for half a day. If, on this campus, Carrie Johnson's rogue organization could only muster a large lecture hall's worth of signature's I think it is time to pack it in.
Steven Dalton Junior, School of Public Affairs
