The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 37 - Christopher Columbus Actually Was A Great Man

00:00:00.000 The left is attempting a kill shot at Christopher Columbus, but I love Christopher Columbus and I love Columbus Day.

00:00:06.720 I once had my own float in the Columbus Day parade, but that's a bizarre story for another time.

00:00:11.980 We will be dedicating the entire show today to debunking the left's anti-history and figuring out who Christopher Columbus really was and what he really means.

00:00:20.980 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:30.000 As ever, Tony Soprano sums it up well.

00:01:00.000 He's the father of our country.

00:01:01.820 What's your point?

00:01:03.020 His history teacher, Mr. Cushman, is teaching your son that if Columbus was alive today, he would go on trial for crimes against humanity like Milosevic and, you know, Europe.

00:01:13.480 Your teacher said that?

00:01:15.040 It's not just my teacher. It's the truth. It's in my history book.

00:01:21.240 So you finally read a book on it?

00:01:23.260 Tony.

00:01:26.940 Look, you had to work in Columbus's shoes to see what he went through.

00:01:30.200 People thought the world was flat, for crying out loud.

00:01:32.920 Then he lands on an island with a bunch of naked savages on it.

00:01:35.320 I mean, that took a lot of guts.

00:01:37.220 You remember when we went to Florida, the heat, and those bugs?

00:01:40.220 Well, like it took guts to murder people and put them in chains.

00:01:42.940 He was a victim of his time.

00:01:44.600 Who cares? It's what he did.

00:01:46.100 He discovered America is what he did. 0.78

00:01:48.120 He was a brave Italian explorer.

00:01:49.560 And in this house, Christopher Columbus is a hero.

00:01:52.120 End of story.

00:01:53.840 You tell him, Tony.

00:01:55.120 Basically sums up exactly what I think.

00:01:57.360 In that clip, Anthony Jr. is reading Howard Zinn's nonsense of people's history of the United States.

00:02:03.080 Nothing so typifies the American left's present wave of statue-toppling, anti-historical hysteria as its war against Christopher Columbus.

00:02:11.940 We have 25-year-old Gina Darlene-Gonzalez who was arrested September 22nd for vandalizing a statue of Columbus in San Jose, California.

00:02:20.000 The word murderer was spray-painted on a statue of Columbus in Binghamton, New York in September.

00:02:23.860 In Minneapolis, a petition is circulating to replace the statue of Columbus at the state capitol with one of Prince.

00:02:31.400 You know, the artist formerly known as Prince.

00:02:32.880 That's a true story.

00:02:33.860 A Columbus statue in Yonkers was beheaded.

00:02:36.320 New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has created a commission to decide whether and how to remove the Columbus statue by Central Park.

00:02:42.660 The L.A. City Council voted unanimously to rename Columbus Day, quote, Indigenous Peoples Day.

00:02:48.840 Seattle, Albuquerque, Denver, Phoenix, Santa Fe, and Ann Arbor also all have renamed Columbus Day, Indigenous Peoples Day.

00:02:56.380 The Wikipedia page of Christopher Columbus is now locked because left-wing revisionists have tried to make the man appear so controversial.

00:03:04.440 Why does the left hate Christopher Columbus so much?

00:03:06.760 It's because Christopher Columbus embodies Western civilization, a transnational, devotedly Christian, illiterate of low birth. 1.00

00:03:15.400 He single-handedly revitalized a dying Europe whose lands Muslim invaders had been steadily conquering for centuries. 0.99

00:03:22.740 An autodidact and the greatest navigator of his age, he spent nearly a decade fruitlessly attempting to convince the Portuguese and then the Spanish crowns to fund his impossibly ambitious vision, at long last to success.

00:03:35.160 He fulfilled Seneca's prophecy that a new world would be discovered across the sea.

00:03:40.540 He created the modern era, and he played the single most important role in the founding of America.

00:03:45.760 In other words, Christopher Columbus personifies every single thing the left hates.

00:03:50.580 To give you an example of left-wing anti-history and willful ignorance on Columbus, take this 2015 article from Dylan Matthews, headlined with Vox's Typical Sobriety, quote,

00:04:01.760 Nine reasons Christopher Columbus was a murderer, tyrant, and scoundrel.

00:04:06.340 Gotta love Vox. 1.00

00:04:07.720 He says, and this is probably the worst charge that Matthew alleges, quote,

00:04:12.180 Settlers under Columbus sold nine- and ten-year-old girls into sexual slavery. 0.93

00:04:16.860 Matthews asserts, this one he admitted himself in a letter to Dona Juana de la Torre, a friend of the Spanish Queen, quote,

00:04:24.140 There are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls. Those from nine to ten are now in demand, and for all ages, a good price must be paid. 0.97

00:04:32.960 Now, you'd think from Vox's article that Columbus devised the plan or that he approved of it, of selling these girls into slavery.

00:04:39.580 But, of course, Vox has to mislead you, and you'd be wrong if you thought that.

00:04:43.380 Even a cursory look at the letter that Vox is talking about shows how misleading they are.

00:04:48.340 Columbus isn't bragging about selling the girls into slavery. He's not even defending it.

00:04:51.840 On the contrary, in the very next sentence, Columbus writes, quote,

00:04:56.460 I assert that the violence of the calumny of turbulent persons has injured me more than my services have profited me,

00:05:04.300 which is a bad example for the present and for the future.

00:05:07.800 I take my oath that a number of men have gone to the Indies who did not deserve water in the sight of God and of the world. 1.00

00:05:14.140 He's complaining, he's lamenting these awful things that are happening.

00:05:17.680 Anti-Columbus crusaders in recent years have focused most of their attention on a document uncovered in 2006

00:05:24.380 that allegedly exposes the discoverer of the Americas as a monster.

00:05:28.960 Headlines at the time of the document's discovery in 2006 include, quote,

00:05:32.920 The lost document reveals Columbus as tyrant of the Caribbean.

00:05:36.600 Columbus exposed as iron-fisted tyrant who tortured his slaves.

00:05:40.860 Christopher Columbus was actually punished for being a horrible person.

00:05:45.000 Christopher Columbus was evil.

00:05:46.400 Now, the news articles quote the most lurid and damning verses from this uncovered document,

00:05:51.520 but they're all strangely silent on the nature of the document itself.

00:05:56.180 Now, because virtually all of these articles stay mum on the question of what exactly this document is and who wrote it,

00:06:02.940 I had to do a little bit of research to find out that the report's author is none other than Francisco Bobadilla,

00:06:08.540 Christopher Columbus's chief political rival and the man who successfully usurped power from him as governor of the West Indies.

00:06:15.500 This would be like saying that a lost document from Walter Mondale proves that Ronald Reagan was a terrible president and a tyrant.

00:06:23.460 Now, indeed, Christopher Columbus spent years of his life refuting the document as a vicious libel,

00:06:29.740 and he turned down, as a matter of principle, lucrative agreements with the Spanish crown that did not correct for history what he regarded as calumny.

00:06:37.160 This isn't to say that Columbus was guiltless in the Spanish treatment of natives,

00:06:41.380 but the left's claims of Columbus's special monstrosity are without foundation.

00:06:46.020 Even Bartolomé de las Casas, the first resident bishop of the Americas and the most vociferous defender of the indigenous islanders against Spanish slavery and brutality,

00:06:56.400 admired Christopher Columbus to the end.

00:06:58.380 He met Columbus.

00:06:59.340 He expressed as much in his history of the Indies.

00:07:01.520 Stanford professor emerita Carol Delaney points out this ignorance.

00:07:05.560 She says these revisionists are, quote,

00:07:07.880 blaming Columbus for the things he didn't do.

00:07:10.480 It was mostly the people who came after, the settlers.

00:07:13.060 I just think he's been terribly maligned.

00:07:14.980 I think that too.

00:07:16.160 Delaney points out that in the man's own writings and the writings of those who knew him,

00:07:20.180 Columbus seems to be, quote,

00:07:21.540 very much on the side of the Indians,

00:07:23.420 and he even adopted the son of an American Indian leader that he had befriended.

00:07:26.960 Well, it's no surprise that the era of fake news has uneducated ingrates tweeting on historical anti-Western nonsense.

00:07:34.220 So let's dispel the lies and confusion.

00:07:37.300 Who was Christopher Columbus?

00:07:39.700 Christopher O'Colombo was born in 1451 in Genoa, Italy, to a lower middle class wool weaver.

00:07:46.260 He was born to no rank.

00:07:47.540 He received no education other than the extensive self-instruction into which he would channel his sizable genius.

00:07:54.180 No portraits were painted of him during his life.

00:07:56.240 And some of the most famous ones portray him flat wrong against the description.

00:08:00.820 Bartolomé de las Casas describes him as, quote,

00:08:04.040 more than middling tall, face long and giving an air of authority,

00:08:07.500 aquiline nose, blue eyes, complexion light and tending to bright red,

00:08:11.680 beard and hair red when young but very soon turned gray from his labors.

00:08:16.680 He was affable and cheerful in speaking.

00:08:18.800 He was sober and moderate in eating, drinking, clothing and footwear.

00:08:22.060 He was a gentleman of great force of spirit, of lofty thoughts, naturally inclined to undertake worthy deeds and signal enterprises,

00:08:29.940 patient and long-suffering, and a forgiver of injuries,

00:08:33.480 and wished nothing more than that those who offended against him should recognize their errors

00:08:38.060 and that the delinquents be reconciled with him.

00:08:40.840 That's de las Casas.

00:08:41.740 By 1480, he had moved to Portugal, married the daughter of a nobleman,

00:08:46.200 traveled to Iceland, Ireland and Africa, and had his first son.

00:08:50.340 He educated himself and made his first pitch to sail westward across the ocean to the Orient.

00:08:56.420 The Portuguese crown rejected the proposal, so he traveled to Spain with his five-year-old son.

00:09:02.640 By then, a widower and in debt, particularly from the costs of burying his wife, Dona Felipa,

00:09:07.760 in a matter befitting her noble rank,

00:09:10.060 Columbus quickly left for Spain to pitch Queen Isabella on his vision to discover a new passage to the Indies.

00:09:16.600 He spent five years combing the geographical texts of Marco Polo, Pliny, Pierre D'Ai,

00:09:21.180 and others to make his case before a royal committee.

00:09:25.180 Now, at long last, after eight years of lobbying the Spanish crown,

00:09:28.720 King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella rejected his request.

00:09:32.300 So he spent eight years and he just, all of that for nothing.

00:09:35.260 But just as he was leaving, the keeper of the privy purse convinced Queen Isabella to call him back,

00:09:40.140 and Las Casas asserts that it was ultimately Columbus's personality,

00:09:45.420 rather than the plausibility of his plan, that convinced the queen.

00:09:48.700 But it almost didn't happen.

00:09:49.660 The Americas were almost not discovered.

00:09:51.620 It was that last minute turned around.

00:09:53.880 Another reason the left hates Christopher Columbus, speaking of providence,

00:09:57.460 is his devout Catholicism.

00:09:59.600 He made a confession and took the Eucharist the morning he set sail.

00:10:02.680 He set his book of hours privately in his own cabin,

00:10:05.440 instructed the youngest sailors to lead prayers every half hour

00:10:08.800 for the entire duration of that first voyage,

00:10:11.480 and ended each day of sailing with a ship-wide recitation of Our Father,

00:10:15.860 Hail Mary, Apostles' Creed, and Hail Holy Queen.

00:10:19.660 Columbus had virtually no navigation tools at his disposal.

00:10:22.380 He relied on the relatively crude instrument of dead reckoning,

00:10:25.720 which is basically exactly what it sounds like.

00:10:28.220 He just laid down his compass courses and estimated distances on a chart.

00:10:31.980 Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence that Columbus even took an astrolabe on his first voyage.

00:10:38.140 Columbus had to put down several mutinies,

00:10:40.300 but sheer force of will and confidence in the divine providence of his journey

00:10:44.540 prevented him from agreeing to his sailors' demands and turning back for Spain.

00:10:49.340 After several false landfalls on the night of October 11th,

00:10:52.680 Christopher Columbus spotted a flickering light as that of a candle on the horizon.

00:10:57.280 Several others on board attested to seeing the flash,

00:10:59.800 but given the distances to land,

00:11:01.360 the flame couldn't have been a fire or a torch on shore or nearshore.

00:11:04.660 No explanation has ever been given as to what the men saw.

00:11:09.020 But within hours, they did spot land.

00:11:11.960 And what of the rough treatment of natives?

00:11:14.640 As has happened elsewhere in European contact with primitive societies,

00:11:18.560 think of the Mayflower and Thanksgiving,

00:11:20.960 things started out well.

00:11:22.920 Columbus and his men encountered the naked Taino people 1.00

00:11:25.560 on the island of San Salvador in the Bahamas.

00:11:28.140 He named the island after Jesus, the Savior.

00:11:30.880 Everybody was peaceful, and Columbus specifically instructed his crews

00:11:34.600 not to take advantage of the Indians.

00:11:37.300 The Tainos told the explorers about less peaceful tribes,

00:11:40.580 which explained the marks and wounds on the natives' bodies,

00:11:43.420 on the Tainos' bodies.

00:11:44.980 Those tribes inhabited the Isla de Caribe,

00:11:47.920 and they were known for two things,

00:11:49.580 elegant cotton rugs and eating people.

00:11:52.680 Settlers who entered their huts found precisely these two things,

00:11:56.060 cotton rugs, some of which they brought back to Spain,

00:11:58.300 and large cuts of human flesh.

00:12:00.880 Other native tribes informed them that the Caribs

00:12:03.260 considered babies and fetuses a particular delicacy.

00:12:06.800 The Caribs introduced the word cannibal into the English language.

00:12:10.360 The Caribs of Dominica killed and ate anyone who came on shore, 1.00

00:12:13.720 though they once were made sick after eating a fryer

00:12:15.880 and so left alone anyone in ecclesiastical garb.

00:12:19.200 The Spaniards quickly learned to send friars 0.99

00:12:21.260 when they needed to stop at Dominica for water or supplies.

00:12:25.700 Natives destroyed the first settlement established by Columbus, 1.00

00:12:28.220 killing all the Spanish present and burning their buildings to the ground. 1.00

00:12:32.140 Even then, Columbus showed restraint

00:12:34.020 when his council wanted to kill various natives in their midst.

00:12:38.080 Another group of natives mugged Spaniards and stole their clothes. 1.00

00:12:41.480 Although Alonso de Hoyada cut off the ears of one

00:12:44.740 and captured three to be executed,

00:12:46.780 Columbus intervened and let them live.

00:12:49.340 It's important to remember, too,

00:12:50.660 that these were the first colonial questions in history,

00:12:53.420 in modern history.

00:12:54.940 Columbus had to pioneer not merely a geographic expedition,

00:12:58.280 but also a first-ever matter of international diplomacy

00:13:01.060 and domestic politics.

00:13:03.320 When Columbus returned from his second voyage,

00:13:05.520 he wore the coarse brown habit of a friar

00:13:08.100 because he believed his difficulties in colonial governance

00:13:11.140 were divine punishment for his pride.

00:13:14.160 He arrived in Santo Domingo on his third voyage in 1498

00:13:17.560 to find utter disarray and a revolt

00:13:19.960 led by local mayor Francisco Roldan.

00:13:22.720 In order to quell the revolt,

00:13:24.220 Columbus agreed to humiliating terms,

00:13:26.580 including the creation of a system called

00:13:28.920 repartimentos and later encomienda,

00:13:32.160 which extorted labor from the natives.

00:13:34.180 This is a major point of left-wing criticism of Columbus.

00:13:37.300 But Roldan had backed Columbus into a corner.

00:13:40.500 So while Columbus may have been a weak governor,

00:13:42.960 accusations of tyranny came from political rivals,

00:13:45.420 and they were indulged by the crown primarily

00:13:47.600 because they had not yet recouped their investment

00:13:49.720 in Columbus's voyages.

00:13:51.720 The allegations also gave the grant and pretext

00:13:53.880 to avoid paying Columbus what it owed him,

00:13:56.140 which was considerable

00:13:56.940 and which he spent years trying to recoup.

00:14:00.120 To seal his political fate,

00:14:01.580 Francisco de Bobadilla,

00:14:03.240 Columbus's chief political rival

00:14:04.600 and author of the left's favorite damnation of the man

00:14:07.780 and defamation of the man,

00:14:09.420 was able to gain power before the Spanish crown knew

00:14:12.660 Columbus and Roldan had come to terms.

00:14:15.420 The man who risked everything to discover the new world,

00:14:18.480 to create our world and to institute modernity,

00:14:21.120 was sent back to Europe in chains.

00:14:23.680 Columbus explained his outrage

00:14:25.200 and gave an important lesson in pride

00:14:27.600 and historical judgment,

00:14:29.240 which the left in its undeserved self-adulation

00:14:32.160 has utterly ignored.

00:14:34.020 He wrote,

00:14:34.480 They judged me there as a governor

00:14:37.020 who had gone to Sicily

00:14:38.420 or to a city or town under a regular government

00:14:41.160 where the laws can be observed in toto

00:14:43.680 without fear of losing all,

00:14:45.960 and I am suffering grave injury.

00:14:48.340 I should be judged as a captain

00:14:50.480 who went from Spain to the Indies

00:14:52.700 to conquer a people numerous and warlike, 0.93

00:14:55.340 whose manners and religion are very different from ours, 0.97

00:14:57.820 who live in Sierras and mountains,

00:14:59.900 without fixed settlements,

00:15:01.080 and whereby divine will I have placed

00:15:03.380 under the sovereignty of the king and queen,

00:15:05.140 our lords,

00:15:06.080 another world,

00:15:07.260 whereby Spain,

00:15:08.560 which was reckoned poor,

00:15:11.020 is become the richest of countries.

00:15:13.080 And this is the crux

00:15:14.420 of why maligning our forebears

00:15:16.060 is as ungrateful as it is ignorant.

00:15:18.680 It must be nice,

00:15:19.800 it must be nice

00:15:21.120 to sit in the freest,

00:15:22.780 most prosperous,

00:15:24.040 most charitable country

00:15:25.040 in the history of the world,

00:15:26.020 and from a position

00:15:27.260 of totally unmerited luxury,

00:15:29.740 slander the man

00:15:30.500 who made it all possible

00:15:31.540 without even having the decency,

00:15:33.860 integrity,

00:15:34.660 or intellectual curiosity

00:15:36.180 to read more than a Vox.com headline

00:15:38.580 on the subject.

00:15:40.600 Those who have tracked

00:15:41.520 Columbus's Christian piety

00:15:42.940 in this brief history lesson

00:15:45.000 will enjoy the coincidence

00:15:46.600 that he died on the Feast of the Ascension

00:15:48.580 in 1506.

00:15:50.140 His last words echoed his saviors,

00:15:52.220 who said,

00:15:52.660 Those who call him a murderer

00:16:01.300 and a tyrant

00:16:02.180 and whatever other nonsense

00:16:03.520 they belch 0.98

00:16:04.140 should consider

00:16:04.920 some other words of Columbus,

00:16:06.720 which he addressed

00:16:07.640 to the Spanish sovereigns

00:16:09.020 in his lettera rarissima.

00:16:10.900 He said,

00:16:11.340 Let those who are fond of blaming

00:16:14.320 and finding fault

00:16:15.380 while they sit safely at home ask,

00:16:18.300 Why did you not do thus and so?

00:16:21.040 I wish they were on this voyage.

00:16:23.360 I well believe that another voyage

00:16:25.340 of a different kind awaits them

00:16:26.920 or our faith is not.

00:16:29.300 For those who didn't catch

00:16:30.260 that last part,

00:16:31.300 he's telling them to go to hell

00:16:32.460 and so am I.

00:16:33.640 Happy Columbus Day.

00:16:35.180 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:16:36.260 This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:16:37.720 Come back next time

00:16:38.680 and we'll do it all again.

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The Michael Knowles Show - October 09, 2017

Ep. 37 - Christopher Columbus Actually Was A Great Man

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