Christopher Columbus...Friend or Foe..to Americans?

[RedRocksU2]

....thoughts?

 

[A_Wanderer]

He was a European who mercilessly exploited the native peoples and the environment to his own ends.

Definitely friend, if we altered history just that slight bit then the concequences and subsequent expansion of British dominion would never have happened. And if that never occured then the liberal democratic model born from the American revolution may never have developed fully.

But this in itself does not say that Columbus wasn't a man of his times who did things that by todays standards would be considered criminal.

 

[melon]

Columbus is a rather ordinary explorer, undeserving of any "heroic" status. But he doesn't deserve any extra demonization that any other explorer of his era doesn't deserve themselves.

Melon

 

[yolland]

Why would Columbus be considered a "foe" to non-Native Americans? I mean, I could certainly see someone making an argument that his role--unintentional or not--in inaugurating an era of horrific crimes against humanity makes him unworthy of heroization and adulation. But "foe," to me, implies that Columbus' legacy is somehow a direct threat to our way of life, which strikes me as monumentally self-contradictory. Like it or not, our various republics were planted and took root in the blood-drenched ashes of those who came before. I wish to God that weren't true, but that's the way it is.

Nonetheless, I am aware that for Latin Americans--a far higher percentage of whom have Native ancestry than do *most* US and Canadian citizens--Columbus is, understandably, an even more morally complicated and politically loaded figure.

 

[Dreadsox]

This reminds me of the Columbus Day thread I started three years ago!

 

[Antilarry]

yeah lets talk about stuff that really matters. I love it!