The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 37 - Christopher Columbus Actually Was A Great Man

Episode Date: October 9, 2017

Michael Knowles explains the difference between leftist lies and reality, and why Christopher Columbus is the Left's public enemy #1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Left is attempting a kill shot at Christopher Columbus. But I love Christopher Columbus, and I love Columbus Day. I once had my own float in the Columbus Day Parade, but that's a bizarre story for another time. We will be dedicating the entire show today to debunking the Left's anti-history and figuring out who Christopher Columbus really was and what he really means. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles show. As ever, Tony Soprano sums it up well. That is just one person's opinion, Anthony.

What, football again? He's not going to get hurt. He's a tough kid. Oh, Jesus. We're having a discussion about Christopher Columbus. They would make fine servants. With 50 men, we could subgate them. Subjugate. And make them do whatever we want.

That doesn't sound like a slave trader to you? George Washington had slaves, the father of our country. What's your point? His history teacher, Mr. Cushman, is teaching your son that if Columbus was alive today, he would go on trial for crimes against humanity like Milosevic and, you know, Europe. Your teacher said that.

It's not just my teacher. It's the truth. It's in my history book. So you finally read a book in a... Tony. Look, you had to work in Columbus' shoes to see what he went through. People thought the world was flat for crying out loud.

Then he lands on an island with a bunch of naked savages on it. I mean, that took a lot of guts. You remember when we went to Florida, the heat, and those bugs? Well, like it took guts to murder people and put him in chains. He was a victim of his time.

Who cares? It's what he did. He discovered America is what he did. He was a brave Italian explorer. And in this house, Christopher Columbus is a hero. End of story. You tell him, Tony. Basically sums up exactly what I think. In that clip, Anthony Jr. is reading Howard Zinn's nonsense of people's history of the United States.

Nothing so typifies the American left's present wave of statue toppling, anti-historical hysteria as its war against Christopher Columbus. We have 25-year-old Gina Darlene Gonzalez, was arrested September 22nd for vandalizing a statue of Columbus in San Jose, California. The word murderer was spray-painted on a statue of Columbus in Binghamton, New York in September. In Minneapolis, a petition is circulating to replace the statue of Columbus at the state capital with one of Prince. You know, the artist formerly known as Prince, that's true story. A Columbus statue in Yonkers was beheaded.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has created a commission to decide whether and how to remove the Columbus statue. by Central Park. The LA City Council voted unanimously to rename Columbus Day, quote, Indigenous People's Day, Seattle, Albuquerque, Denver, Phoenix, Santa Fe, and Ann Arbor. Also all have renamed Columbus Day, Indigenous People's Day. The Wikipedia page of Christopher Columbus is now locked because left-wing revisionists have tried to make the man appear so controversial. Why does the left hate Christopher Columbus so much? It's because Christopher Columbus embodies Western civilization. A transnational, devotedly Christian, illiterate of low birth, he single-handedly revitalized a dying Europe whose lands Muslim invaders had been steadily conquering

for centuries. An autodidact and the greatest navigator of his age, he spent nearly a decade fruitlessly attempting to convince the Portuguese and then the Spanish crowns to fund his impossibly ambitious vision, at long last to success. He fulfilled Seneca's prophecy that a new world would be discovered across the sea. He created the modern era and he played the single most important role in the founding of America. In other words,

Christopher Columbus personifies every single thing the left hates. To give you an example of left-wing anti-history and willful ignorance on Columbus, take this 2015 article from Dylan Matthews, headlined with Vox's typical sobriety.

Quote, nine reasons Christopher Columbus was a murderer, tyrant, and scoundrel. Gotta love Vox. He says, And this is probably the worst charge that Matthew alleges. Quote,

Settlers under Columbus sold nine and 10-year-old girls into sexual slavery. Matthews asserts, this one he admitted himself in a letter to Donawana de la Torre, a friend of the Spanish queen. Quote, there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls. Those from nine to ten are now in demand. And for all ages, a good price must be paid. Now, you'd think from Vox's article that Columbus devised the plan or that he approved of it of selling these girls into slavery, but of course Vox has to mislead you, and you'd be wrong

if you thought that. Even a cursory look at the letter that Vox is talking about shows how misleading they are. Columbus isn't bragging about selling the girls into slavery. He's not even defending it. On the contrary, in the very next sentence, Columbus writes, quote, I assert that the violence of the calumny of turbulent persons has injured me more than my services have profited me, which is a bad example for the present and for the future. I take my oath that a number of men have gone to the Indies who did not deserve water in the sight of God and of the world. He's complaining. He's lamenting these awful things that are happening. Anti-Columbus crusaders in recent years have focused most of their attention on a document uncovered in 2006 that allegedly exposes the discoverer of the

Americas as a monster. Headlines at the time of the document's discovery in 2006 include, quote, the lost document reveals Columbus as tyrant of the Caribbean. Columbus exposed as iron-fisted tyrant who tortured his slaves. Christopher Columbus was actually punished for being a horrible person. Christopher Columbus was evil. Now, the news articles quote the most lurid and damning verses from this uncovered document, but they're all strangely silent on the nature of the document itself. Now, because virtually all of these articles stay mum on the question of what exactly this document is

and who wrote it, I had to do a little bit of research to find out that the report's author is none other than Francisco Bobadilla, Christopher Columbus's chief political rival, and the man who successfully usurped power from him as governor of the West Indies. This would be like saying that a lost document from Walter Mondale proves that Ronald Reagan was a terrible president and a tyrant. Now, indeed, Christopher Columbus spent years of his life, refuting the document as a vicious libel, and he turned down as a matter of principle, lucrative agreements with the Spanish crown that did not correct for history would he regarded as calumny. This isn't to say that Columbus was guiltless in the Spanish treatment of natives,

but the left's claims of Columbus's special monstrosity are without foundation. Even Bartolome de las Casas, the first resident bishop of the Americas and the most vociferous defender of the indigenous islanders against Spanish slavery and brutality, admired Christopher Columbus to the end. He met Columbus. He expressed as much in his history of the Indies. Stanford Professor Emerita, Carol Delaney, points out this ignorance. She says these revisionists are, quote, blaming Columbus for the things he didn't do. It was mostly the people who came after, the settlers.

I just think he's been terribly maligned. I think that too. Delaney points out that in the man's own writings and the writings of those who knew him, Columbus seems to be, quote, very much on the side of the Indians. And he even adopted the son of an American Indian leader that he had befriended. Well, it's no surprise that the era of fake news has uneducated ingrates tweeting unhistorical anti-Western nonsense. So let's dispel the lies and confusion. Who was Christopher Columbus?

Christopher O'Colombo was born in 1451 in Genoa, Italy, to a lower middle-class woolweaver. He was born to no rank. He received no education other than the extensive self-instruction into which he would channel his sizable genius. No portraits were painted of him during his life, and some of the most famous ones portray him flat wrong against the description. Bartolome de las Casas describes him as, quote, More than middling tall, face long and giving an air of authority, Aquiline nose, blue eyes, complexion light, and tending to bright red, beard and hair red when young, but very soon turned gray from his labors.

He was affable and cheerful in speaking. He was sober and moderate in eating, drinking, clothing, and footwear. He was a gentleman of great force of spirit, of lofty thoughts, naturally inclined to undertake worthy deeds and signal enterprises. patient and long-suffering and a forgiver of injuries, and wish nothing more than that those who offended against him should recognize their errors and that the delinquents be reconciled with him. That's de las Casas.

By 1480 he had moved to Portugal, married the daughter of a nobleman, traveled to Iceland, Ireland, and Africa, and had his first son. He educated himself and made his first pitch to sail westward across the ocean to the Orient. The Portuguese crown rejected the proposal, so he traveled to Spain with his five-year-old son. By then a widower and in debt, particularly from the costs of burying his wife, Dona Felipe, in a matter befitting her noble rank, Columbus quickly left for Spain to pitch Queen Isabella on his vision to discover a new passage to the Indies. He spent five years combing the geographical texts of Marco Polo, Pliny, Pierre D'Iye, and others to make his case before a royal committee. Now, at long last, after eight years of lobbying the Spanish crown, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella rejected his request. So he spent eight years and he just all of that for nothing. But just as he

was leaving, the keeper of the privy purse convinced Queen Isabella to call him back, and Las Casas asserts that it was ultimately Columbus's personality rather than the plausibility of his plan that convinced the Queen. But it almost didn't happen. The Americas were almost not discovered. It was that last minute turned around. Another reason, the left hates Christopher Columbus, speaking of Providence, is his devout Catholicism. He made a confession and took the Eucharist the morning he set sail. He said his book of hours privately in his own cabin, instructed the youngest sailors to lead prayers every half hour for the entire duration of that first voyage, and ended each day of sailing with a ship-wide recitation of our father, Hail Mary, Apostles Creed,

and Hail Holy Queen. Columbus had virtually no navigation tools at his disposal. He relied on the relatively crude instrument of dead reckoning, which is basically exactly what it sounds like, he just laid down his compass courses and estimated distances on a chart. Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence that Columbus even took an astrolabe on his first voyage. Columbus had to put down several mutinies, but sheer force of will and confidence in the divine providence of his journey prevented him from agreeing to his sailors' demands and turning back for Spain. After several false landfalls on the night of October 11th, Christopher Columbus spotted a flickering light as that of a candle on the horizon. Several others on board attested to seeing the flash, but given the distances to land,

the flame couldn't have been a fire or a torch on shore or near shore. No explanation has ever been given as to what the men saw, but within hours they did spot land. And what of the rough treatment of natives? As has happened elsewhere in European contact with primitive societies, think of the Mayflower and Thanksgiving, things started out well. Columbus and his men encountered the naked Taino people on the island of San Salvador in the Bahamas. He named the island after Jesus, the Savior. Everybody was peaceful, and Columbus specifically instructed his crews not to take advantage of the Indians. The Tainos told the explorers about less peaceful tribes, which explained the marks and wounds on the natives' bodies, on the Taino's bodies. Those tribes inhabited the Ila

de Carib, and they were known for two things. elegant cotton rugs, and eating people. Settlers who entered their huts found precisely these two things. Cotton rugs, some of which they brought back to Spain, and large cuts of human flesh. Other native tribes informed them that the Caribs considered babies and fetuses a particular delicacy. The Caribs introduced the word cannibal into the English language. The Caribs of Dominica killed an ate anyone who came on shore, though they once were made sick after eating a friar and so left alone anyone in ecclesiastical garb.

The Spaniards quickly learned to send friars when they needed to stop at Dominica for water or supplies. Natives destroyed the first settlement established by Columbus, killing all the Spanish present and burning their buildings to the ground. Even then, Columbus showed restraint when his counsel wanted to kill various natives in their midst. Another group of natives mugged Spaniards and stole their clothes. Although Alonzo de Hoyada cut off the ears of one and captured three to be executed, Columbus intervened and let them live. It's important to remember, too, that these were the first colonial questions in history,

in modern history. Columbus had to pioneer not merely a geographic expedition, but also a first-ever matter of international diplomacy and domestic politics. When Columbus returned from his second voyage, he wore the coarse brown habit of a friar because he believed his difficulties in colonial governance were divine punishment for his pride. He arrived in Santo Domingo on his third voyage in 1498 to find utterance. disarray and a revolt led by local mayor Francisco Raldan. In order to quell the revolt, Columbus agreed to humiliating terms, including the creation of a system called repartimiantos and later encomienda, which extorted labor from the natives. This is a major point of left-wing

criticism of Columbus. But Roldan had backed Columbus into a corner. So while Columbus may have been a weak governor, accusations of tyranny came from political rivals, and they were indulged by the crown primarily because they had not yet recouped their investment in Columbus's voyages. The allegations also gave the grant in pretext to avoid paying Columbus what it owed him, which was considerable in which he spent years trying to recoup. To seal his political fate, Francisco de Bobadilla, Columbus's chief political rival and author of the left's favorite damnation of the man and defamation of the man, was able to gain power before the Spanish crown knew

Columbus and Roldan had come to terms. The man who risked everything to discover the new world to create our world and to institute modernity was sent back to Europe in chains. Columbus explained his outrage and gave an important lesson in pride and historical judgment, which the left in its undeserved self-adulation has utterly ignored. He wrote, They judged me there as a governor who had gone to Sicily or to a city or town under a regular government, where the laws can be observed in toto without fear of. of losing all. And I am suffering grave injury. I should be judged as a captain who went from Spain

to the Indies to conquer a people numerous and warlike, whose manners and religion are very different from ours, who live in sierras and mountains, without fixed settlements, and whereby divine will I have placed under the sovereignty of the king and queen our lords another world, whereby Spain, which was reckoned poor, is become the richest of countries. And this is the crux of why maligning our forebears is as ungrateful as it is ignorant. It must be nice. It must be nice to sit in the freest, most prosperous, most charitable country in the history of the world, and from a position of totally unmerited luxury, slander the man who made it all possible without even having the decency, integrity, or intellectual curiosity to read more than a vox.com headline on the subject.

Those who have tracked Columbus's Christian piety in this brief history lesson will enjoy the coincidence that he died on the Feast of the Ascension in 1506. His last words echoed his saviors, who said, In manos to us, dominé, commend, spiritum, into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit. Those who call him a murderer and a tyrant, and whatever other nonsense they belch, should consider some other words of Columbus, which he addressed to the Spanish sovereigns in his last lettererarissimo. He said, quote, Let those who are fond of blaming and finding fault, while they sit safely at home, ask,

Why did you not do thus? And so? I wish they were on this voyage. I well believe that another voyage of a different kind awaits them, or our faith is not. For those who didn't catch that last part, he's telling them to go to hell, and so am I. Happy Columbus Day. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. Come back next time, and we'll do it all. again.