Letters for Oct. 18, 2015 Columbus doesn’t deserve to be honored Dear Ms. Stoddard, please do some research on the truth about Christopher Columbus. What we were taught in school back in the day is false. He was not a
Letters for Oct. 18, 2015
Columbus doesn’t deserve to be honored
Dear Ms. Stoddard, please do some research on the truth about Christopher Columbus. What we were taught in school back in the day is false. He was not a “great discoverer.” He and his crew committed terrible atrocities to the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean Islands and Central America — he never even reached the shores of our America. Their agenda was to find riches, claim the land, and destroy and enslave the people — that’s exactly what happened. They brought disease, which killed off tens of thousands of the natives. We should not honor an historical figure such as that with a holiday in his name. It is time to change that.
Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day! Happy Holidays and a very, Merry Christmas to all.
Valerie Freitas
Kalaheo
Keep American history the way it was created
Mahalo, Gini Stoddard, for standing up for the stupidity of changing the names and concepts of American culture and history. Unfortunately what we have in government right now are the radical students of the ‘60s who want to change the identity of the United States to fit their socialist, “feel good” everyone-is-equal agenda.
Remember what Orwell said, “Everyone is equal; however, some are more equal than others.” That is the true socialist agenda. I know. I was one of those radical students, a member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), The YIPPIE party (have the manifesto hanging in my office to remind me how dumb I was), I marched on Washington twice and protested Nixon at the Waldorf Astoria, was security at the first Earth Day in New York.
Thank God I matured and came to my senses. There is a reason Columbus was given such praise — not just because he was the first to record his discovery of a new world, he also made it accepted that the world was round and he created the navigation latitudes and longitudes we use today. Yes, Vikings may have come to the new world first but they didn’t record it for posterity. Bell and Edison didn’t discover electricity or the phone but they made it relevant to history and society.
The reason our creative and intelligent forefathers named Washington our capital the District of Columbia, there are numerous schools named Columbia including the prestigious Columbia University, is because his discovery was so much more than just a dangerous trip into the unknown and the arrival in a new land without falling off the end of the earth.
As for indigenous people, it is wonderful to learn and understand the history of their cultures, it is especially relevant for tourism. However, these were Stone Age people who never invented the wheel or metal. For those who wish to go back to glorify and become hunter-gatherers, I advise you to move to the mountains of Montana and give it a try.
Bob Bartolo
Kapaa
