[IMC-Editorial] REMOVE

Tue Oct 7 16:48:03 PDT 2003

Ayn Rand Institute,

Please remove the IMC-Editorial at lists.indymedia.org address from your
recipients list. Thank you.

Chris Kaihatsu
(Chicago Indymedia)

----- Original Message -----
From: "The Ayn Rand Institute" <media at aynrand.org>
To: <imc-editorial at lists.indymedia.org>
Sent: Monday, October 06, 2003 8:02 AM
Subject: [IMC-Editorial] Columbus Day Op-Ed

> 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.
>
> If you plan to use this Op-Ed, please send an email to
> media at aynrand.org with your publication's
> name and the expected date of publication.
>
> Thank you,
>
> David Holcberg
> Media Department, Ayn Rand Institute
> 2121 Alton Parkway Suite 250
> Irvine, CA 92606
> Phone: (949) 222-6550 ext. 226
> E-mail: davidh at aynrand.org
>
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