re: #256 lawhawk

Frickin Bill O’Reilly is truly a moron.

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It’s actually downhill from there.

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.

You missed this part:

First of all, “Indigenous People’s Day” might sound good on the campus of U.C. Berkeley, but it may be troublesome. Yes, some native tribes were enlightened societies but many were not. After inter-indigenous battles, torture and enslavement were often on the menu for the losers.

Then

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.

Native Americans had slaves, so they were evil! Columbus had slaves…but hey, whatcha gonna do?