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GOP Chair of Senate Foreign Relations Committee: Trump's Reckless Threats Could Cause "World War III"

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lawhawk10/09/2017 10:51:26 am PDT

Frickin Bill O’Reilly is truly a moron.

It’s actually downhill from there.

For the record, Columbus made four voyages across the Atlantic between 1492 and 1504. He was looking for a route to Asia so he could buy spices at a discount or something.

But Chris kept running into various Caribbean islands, also the formidable obstacles of South and Central America. There was no passage to the Far East, only an endless drifting around.

Along the way, Columbus ran into some Indian tribes, most notably the Caribes. They did not like Chris and his malodorous European crews. Strife broke out and some bad stuff went down on both sides.

On the island of Hispaniola, present day Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Columbus did establish slavery to support various laborious enterprises. Not good. Slave labor was common at the time the world over, but that’s no excuse.

However, that was a minor part of the “Columbus business,” as Hollywood would have put it if they were wooing him for a three-picture deal. Mostly, Columbus was a brilliant navigator who opened up the world for travel. No small achievement.

He was trying to get to point A, but ended up somewhere else entirely, and he’s treated as a hero. He was lucky, not good.

He established slavery in those areas he did visit, but we’re supposed to ignore that.

Some bad things happened.

Yeah, having your ships get wrecked, your crews lost, etc. are reasons to be honoring him.

You can’t discover a place that was already known to the existing people that lived there. It might be new to you, but it isn’t to them.