[IMC-Editorial] Columbus Day Op-Ed

[The Ayn Rand Institute]

Dear Editor, 

Please consider this Op-Ed submission from the Ayn Rand Institute. For your convenience, 
you can download it from: http://www.aynrand.org/medialink/columbusday2003.shtml

On Columbus Day, Celebrate Western Civilization, Not Multiculturalism

By Michael S. Berliner

Columbus Day this year has a special meaning.
Christopher Columbus is a carrier of Western Civilization and the very
values attacked by terrorists two years ago 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 multi-culturalism, 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. 
_____________________________________________________________________________

Dr. Berliner is a member of the Board of Directors of the Ayn Rand
Institute (www.aynrand.org) in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes the
philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

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