[video=youtube;2wm0EvTk8o4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wm0EvTk8o4&feature=player_embedded[/video] Or rather, Columbus day! Same realm...
If it wasn't Columbus, it would have been another European trader/explorer. I think that the European discovery, colonization and ultimate domination of the western hemisphere is something to be celebrated, even if Columbus as an individual left a lot to be desired. Ed O.
Who would have exterminated the Indigenous population in the name of Jesus Christ. The genocide continued well after Columbus, too.
Name me a part of human history that didn't include winners and losers and I will be quite surprised. Most indigenous people were "exterminated" because they had lived in an isolated fashion from communicable diseases. The black death killed about half of Europe's population in the 1300's and reduced global population overall... and was just one of a number of plagues that struck. I am sorry that so many millions of indigenous people died in the Americas, but no more sorry than I am that the black death was so terrible a few hundreds of years earlier. The reality is that we are here, now, and I believe that my life (and the lives of everyone I know) is better because of European conquest of the New World and I'm happy it happened. Ed O.
Rationalizing a genocide with a pandemic is asinine. One was intentional, the other wasn't (unless you want to blame god); The European population was reduced 30-60% from this outbreak; 98% of the Indigenous population in North and South America was exterminated. We'll just have to agree to disagree.
*yawn* Applying 20th century norms to things that happened centuries earlier is worthless most of the time, IMO. Ed O.
*sleep talking* plagues kill people, so its ok to wipe a race of people off the face of the earth, duh and im happy they did
now, it could be said that we shouldnt waste time lamenting on past indiscretions and instead stop genocide happening TODAY... but i guess those who do not learn from the past are destined to repeat it and thank god they do!
Next time we discover new continents full of people with little or no immunity to diseases that killed vast quantities of our population previously, we will know to wear rubber suits. Would that be better? Ed O.
How about we don't go over to the new continent with the intent of looting its resources and exterminating, subjugating and enslaving its people? But if we did, you know, that's cool too.
Indians enslaved Indians and attempted to wipe out other tribes hundreds of years before Europeans arrived. With the gamut of taxpayer-funded handouts and social services currently needed to prop up their lackadaisical society, it is doubtful they would be in much better shape than they are now had Europeans never arrived. I expect they would be extinct by now.
We sought to "exterminate" its people? That's ridiculous. And how does one exterminate and enslave people at the same time? Slavery and murder--on a micro and macro level--were commonplace throughout history. Acting like we cannot celebrate the good that came from history just because there is bad intermingled strikes me as a bad way to look at the world. Ed O.
