Once Upon a Time…

Rhetorical question: How do we Make America Great Again? Leftist response: I can’t be done because America was never great to begin with!

In the early 1960’s there was a regular feature on the Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle…Fractured Fairy Tales. It appealed to the puerile minds that made up the shows audience. Today, thanks to the ceaseless efforts of the education establishment, we have a new regular feature designed to bedazzle young minds…Fractured History.

During a recent interaction with an eleventh grade student who attends a local public school your humble scribe was at once surprised and and distressed by the following example of Fractured History…

This young skull full of mush (hat tip to El Rushbo) pronounced, with a near lethal dose of intellectual arrogance, that Christopher Columbus, The Admiral of the Ocean, was an evil man who was responsible for all of the transgressions that have transpired in the Western Hemisphere since 1492. This is the sort of ahistorical tomfoolery that would allow the suggestion that the Wright Brothers were responsible for 9/11.

This discussion requires some historical context.

The Dark Ages was a climatic cooling period that dominated Europe from 500 to 900 AD. It was marked by famine, disease, and constant violence. There was limited mobility and little or no education. Historians refer to this as the Golden Age of Randi Weingarten.

Commencing around 900 there was a change in the climate known as the Medieval Warming Period. It was during this period of “global warming” that the forward march of Western Civilization ended its hiatus following the fall of the Roman Empire and transitioned dramatically…from the Dark Ages ultimately to the Age of Enlightenment. The Renaissance and the Reformation began in earnest around 1300. Science, culture, economics and learning flourished and Europe began to look for ways to reach out to the rest of the world, known and unknown.

In 1271 Marco Polo left his home in Venice, Italy and journeyed East to Cathay. His purpose was to establish a commercial and cultural relationship with what was described as the Far East. Unfortunately the two principle trade routes from West to East were fraught with risk. The passage around the Cape of Good Hope, also known as the Cape of Storms, was a maritime graveyard. The overland route was even more hazardous as it required passage through the Muslim controlled Middle East. The Muslims were, at that point, giving full rein to their enthusiasm for terrorism and violence so traveling merchants were reluctant to traverse the Arabian Peninsula.

It is at this point in our tale that Christopher Columbus steps forward to bend the curve of history. Columbus proposed an ocean crossing to the West. He called it his Enterprise of the Indies. He convinced Queen Isabella of Castile that by sailing West he would be able to reach the Far East and establish a safe route for the commercial enterprise. We shall ignore for the moment that this argument would be offensive to AOC and her fellow ignorami because it simply reeks of the evils of capitalism.

In the precis presented by Columbus to the Queen in support of his epic journey he failed to outline his secret plan to enslave native populations, rape indigenous women and pillage the resources of all he “conquered”. In fact the crossing of the Atlantic was a gamble of incredible proportion. Many thought the world was flat and that it was likely that the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, and all aboard, would simply disappear into oblivion. At best they hoped to arrive in Cathay safely and return to Spain with a story of unparalleled opportunity.

Imagine his surprise when he bumped into an entire continent and his landing on Watling’s Island was the first recorded European encounter with the New World…New only because no one knew it was there. This conquering armada was comprised of the aforementioned three ships and a total of 88 crewmen. What they “discovered” was a primitive culture unburdened by the wheel, written language, indoor plumbing, horses or fast food restaurants. Before he returned to Spain his crew built a fort and 44 of his crew remained on the island. When he returned in 1493 the fort was destroyed and the 44 men had disappeared. History is silent as to whether ICE was involved in disappearing the men he left behind.

The world would later learn that some of the “indigenous peoples” in this new world, such as the Aztecs, engaged in slavery and human sacrifice. It suggests that Columbus did not import these uncivilized behaviors to Watling’s Island and beyond.

The courage and curiosity of Columbus should be honored and recognized every October 12 on COLUMBUS DAY, not indigenous people’s day. He was not responsible for anything that transpired by virtue of his discovery of the Western Hemisphere…which had actually been there for millions of years. History was thrust upon him and, ironically, he never set foot on what is now the United States of America. He did however leave us an empty canvas to be filled in by those who later brought from Europe the best of Western Civilization.

The story of Columbus is an example of the cliche that no good deed goes unpunished. The true villains of history are those who act with specific intent and a willful disregard for the foreseeable consequences that flow from disastrous decisions. Take for example the truly horrific decision made by Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876.

In 1876 Hayes, a Republican, ran for President against Samuel Tilden. When the Electoral College convened on December 6, 1876, there was a controversy because three former Confederate States, Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina, each sent two sets of electors to Washington, one for Hayes and one for Tilden. A compromise was reached and Hayes agreed that if the Republican electors were seated he would remove all remaining Federal troops from the Confederacy. This ill-advised ego trip by Hayes reversed all that had been accomplished by Presidents Lincoln and Grant as well as the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. Approximately 90% of the US Black population lived in the South at that time. The protection of the rights and privileges of that entire population was stripped away and for the next eighty years a de facto slavery prevailed south of the Mason-Dixon line. A secondary consequence was that Black voters no longer reflexively supported the Republican Party. Much has been done to correct this egregious blunder.

Recently another corrective action has been undertaken to reverse a terrible decision by a US President. In 2009 the manifestly unqualified EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson, issued an “endangerment finding” that CO2 was a threat to public health and welfare. President Obama emerged, for a moment. from his personal fog bank and endorsed this anti-scientific decision. The cost to our economy and the world’s use of energy has been incalculable. Happily President Trump has reversed the catastrophic endangerment finding and we may again be able to contain another example of the significant damage wrought by Team Obama.

These ill-advised decisions by random Presidents are a blemish on the greatness of America but it requires a fractured history to divert attention from all that has been done to maintain the Shining City on the Hill. The damage done by Hayes has been addressed and the corrective actions should be recognized…unless, of course, you are part of the Fractured History Department of the Board of Education..

Let’s tie this history to the continuing greatness of America.

The greatness that was the Reformation, the Renaissance and the Age of Reason/Enlightenment was imported into America over the 17th and 18th centuries by our American ancestors. America has not been perfect but unlike most nations in history we have gone to incredible lengths and invested significant amounts of blood and treasure, to address our defects and renew our commitment to the values set forth in our founding scripture, The Declaration of Independence.

Slavery is often referred to as our original sin. The fact that Jefferson and Washington were slave owners is a cornerstone of the Fractured History that we foist upon young students. It should be noted that the Constitution included the seeds that would ultimately lead to the emancipation of the American slaves. No slaves would be imported after 1808 as provided in Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1. We fought a bloody Civil War to free the slaves and passed the 13th Amendment shortly before the surrender at Appomattox. What we failed to deal with, in large part driven by the Hayes compromise, was the persistent and ongoing racism of the Democratic Party.

Despite all of its imperfections America remains as the last best hope of carrying on the Liberal tradition of Adam Smith and Edmund Burke as it existed prior to the French Revolution.

The EU makes no pretense of any interest in maintaining the virtues of the Liberal traditions of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. Our European friends are enamored of strong unfettered authority and willingly accept the guilt that is assigned to their Fractured History…colonialism, Christian nationalism, white supremacy, despoliation of Africa and India, their resistance to Islamic invasion and destruction of the global climate. The recent speech to the Munich Security Conference by Secretary of State Marco Rubio put the lie to the Leftist propaganda about the relationship between America and its erstwhile EU allies.

The hollowness of the EU mindset is made painfully clear by the fact that European leaders no longer understand or embrace the concept of free speech. They will fight to the death to protect…”acceptable speech”. Acceptable to whom?

To add the QED Emmanuel Macron President of France has declared that free speech is BS unless it is “regulated”…clearly the first element of the motto of the French Republic liberté, as in liberté, égalité, fraternité, is not understood by Monsieur Macron. Luckily there is an excuse for his ignorance…he married his teacher!