On Columbus Day, Celebrate Western Civilization, Not Multiculturalism

By: Michael S. Berliner

Western civilization stands for the values that make human life possible

Columbus Day approaches and this year has a special meaning. Christopher Columbus is a carrier of Western Civilization and the very values attacked by terrorists on September 11. To the "politically correct," Columbus Day is an occasion to be mourned.

They have mourned, they have attacked, and they have intimidated schools across the country into replacing Columbus Day celebrations with "ethnic diversity" days.

The politically correct view is that Columbus did not discover America, because people had lived here for thousands of years. Worse yet, it's claimed, the main legacy of Columbus is death and destruction. Columbus is routinely vilified as a symbol of slavery and genocide, and the celebration of his arrival likened to a celebration of Hitler and the Holocaust. The attacks on Columbus are ominous, because the actual target is Western Civilization.

Did Columbus "discover" America? Yes--in every important respect. This does not mean that no human eye had been cast on America before Columbus arrived. It does mean that Columbus brought America to the attention of the civilized world, i.e., to the growing, scientific civilizations of Western Europe. The result, ultimately, was the United States of America. It was Columbus' discovery for Western Europe that led to the influx of ideas and people on which this nation was founded--and on which it still rests. The opening of America brought the ideas and achievements of Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and the thousands of thinkers, writers, and inventors who followed.

Prior to 1492 what is now the United States was sparsely inhabited, unused, and undeveloped. The inhabitants were primarily hunter-gatherers, wandering across the land, living from hand to mouth and from day to day. There was virtually no change, no growth for thousands of years. With rare exception, life was nasty, brutish, and short: there was no wheel, no written language, no division of labor, little agriculture and scant permanent settlement; but there were endless, bloody wars. Whatever the problems it brought, the vilified Western culture also brought enormous, undreamed-of benefits, without which most of today's Indians would be infinitely poorer or not even alive.

Columbus should be honored, for in so doing, we honor Western Civilization. But the critics do not want to bestow such honor, because their real goal is to denigrate the values of Western Civilization and to glorify the primitivism, mysticism, and collectivism embodied in the tribal cultures of American Indians. They decry the glorification of the West as "cultural imperialism" and "Eurocentrism." We should, they claim, replace our reverence for Western Civilization with multiculturalism, which regards all cultures (including vicious tyrannies) as morally equal. In fact, they aren't. Some cultures are better than others: a free society is better than slavery; reason is better than brute force as a way to deal with other men; productivity is better than stagnation. In fact, Western Civilization stands for man at his best. It stands for the values that make human life possible: reason, science, self-reliance, individualism, ambition, productive achievement. The values of Western Civilization are values for all men; they cut across gender, ethnicity, and geography. We should honor Western Civilization not for the ethnocentric reason that some of us happen to have European ancestors but because it is the objectively superior culture.

Underlying the political collectivism of the anti-Columbus crowd is a racist view of human nature. They claim that one's identity is primarily ethnic: if one thinks his ancestors were good, he will supposedly feel good about himself; if he thinks his ancestors were bad, he will supposedly feel self-loathing. But it doesn't work; the achievements or failures of one's ancestors are monumentally irrelevant to one's actual worth as a person. Only the lack of a sense of self leads one to look to others to provide what passes for a sense of identity. Neither the deeds nor misdeeds of others are his own; he can take neither credit nor blame for what someone else chose to do. There are no racial achievements or racial failures, only individual achievements and individual failures. One cannot inherit moral worth or moral vice. "Self-esteem through others" is a self-contradiction.

Thus the sham of "preserving one's heritage" as a rational life goal. Thus the cruel hoax of "multicultural education" as an antidote to racism: it will continue to create more racism. Individualism is the only alternative to the racism of political correctness. We must recognize that everyone is a sovereign entity, with the power of choice and independent judgment. That is the ultimate value of Western Civilization, and it should be proudly proclaimed.

Wow. Either this guy is kidding or he's a moron. Now that I read that he's a member of the Ayn Rand Institute, I can see that he's the latter. [Read Berliner's article here!]

Columbus did not "discover" America in any sense. Not only were there millions of Indians living in the Americas for thousands of years before Columbus's grandparents were born, but plenty of other explorers from other countries "discovered" America before Columbus.

This guy's causality is all wrong; Columbus's discovery of America didn't spur people like Galileo to consider that the Earth was round. But the money generated by the Age of Exploration did make Spain the wealthiest country in Europe -- for a while. Using that money, Spain was able to fuel all sorts of endeavors, including artistic ones. So this must be what Michael Berliner means.

Natives did not live "from hand to mouth and from day to day." For the most part, Native Americans were farmers. Remember that it was the Wampanoag of Massachusetts that saved William Bradford and his band of pilgrims from starvation in 1620, as the pilgrims had no idea how to farm the land.

There was a good deal of civilization. In fact, the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan (the site of present-day Mexico City) was estimated to be larger than any of Europe's biggest cities. There was written language and cultural sophistication. By every measure of the word, Native Americans were "civilized." As far as I can tell, Europeans brought the Indians two things that were really advantageous for them: horses and guns. Don't forget that horses aren't indigenous to the Americas; Europeans brought horses with them.

I get extremely tired of the attitude that, somehow, Western civilization is most important and the best civilization. Now, the logical argument for studying Western civilization is that we, Americans, are products of Western civilization, so it makes sense to study our history. But Berliner here and his far-right pals (let's put Michael Savage in there, too) suggest that we should be learning about Western civilization because it's better than every other civilization. But there's no way to quantify civilizations. There's no way to compare them. There's no way of saying "my civilization is better" without being biased in favor of your own civilization.

And it's not a question of "feeling good" about one's ancestors. It's a question of values. Do we really want to celebrate the achievments of a man -- descendants nonwithstanding -- who didn't do a lot of the things he was celebrated for? Or a man who killed a lot of Native Americans? We don't celebrate "George Armstrong Custer" day in school.

If I'm not mistaken Columbus never set foot on mainland North or South America. Unless I'm wrong he landed in the Caribbean, and floated around there a bit, but never actually hit either continent. Incidentally Mark, we do celebrate people who killed a lot of people. Without them our culture wouldn't exist. Even Einstein had his hand in the atomic bomb. Most cultures have committed genocide at one time or another, the Australians were still taking children from Aboriginal parents well into the 60s and "reeducating them" much as we did with Native Americans. During the formative years of our country most of our Presidents fought wars against the Native Americans, Mexicans and Spanish. It was the theory of the times. As far as culture, this has always been a problem. The Indians weren't civilized because they weren't like us. The Celts weren't civilized because they weren't like the Romans. Native tribes in New Guinea and the like aren't civilized because they're different. What defines civilization? Roads, buildings, currency? Writing, art, language? Religion, temples, attitudes towards violence? And culture is not a stationary thing. Look at how our culture has evolved, and will continue to evolve. The point is, Columbus's achievements are not all that great. Sure he kind of bumped into a region of land, then mislabeled it. And that's more than I've done today. But that's no reason to vilify him any more than it is anyone else of the time. You can't compare our culture now to the culture of Columbus's time any more than you could compare the culture of the Natives to the cultures in Spain and England. It inevitably brings out the ethnocentrist in us all where we feel the need to talk down to people from other cultures. My girlfriend is from Oxford and whenever she's here in the States people ask her, "So why don't you move here?" It mystifies people that England is a nice place to live. It seems like its another world. Of course your average American is three hairs away from moron.