When I was a kid, Christopher Columbus was a hero. Yeah, there are a lot of myths about him. He was said to believe the earth was round from watching ships slowly disappear over the horizon instead of just dropping off of the earth. Okay, wrong. Many people of his time believed the earth was round. The Greeks figured that out 6,000 years ago.
But he was the guy who went out to prove it. And in ships that were small compared to today. The flagship, the Santa Maria, was only 117 feet long. The Nina and Pinta were 50 to 70 feet from bow to stern. Whatever you think of him, he was a daring and courageous explorer.
John Stossel, a columnist and political pundit, said in a recent column that American kids are now taught that before Christopher Columbus wrecked things, peaceful Native Americans protected the environment. Hollywood movies feed the narrative. American singer and actress Judy Kuhn was singing voice in Disney’s “Pocahontas” movie. The film’s theme was the "Colors of the Wind" where the young heroine proclaims that all around, there is a life and spirit and a name.
Stossel interviewed Political Science professor Wilfred Reilly, who says that's ridiculous. "Native American hunters gave names to every rabbit in the woods around them? That's not a real thing that happened."
Reilly's new book, Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me, dispels many of the commonly accepted beliefs that are merely myths. "We've gone into almost this cult-like romanticization of the Natives," says Reilly. "They were great warriors and poets, but they hunted buffalo by driving herds of them off 100-foot-tall cliffs!"
A U.S. government guide for teachers says, "Native Americans lived in harmony with nature ... There was a love of every form of life. (They) did not kill anything they could not use."
"Objectively untrue," says Reilly, "That would mean no young male warrior ... ever killed for sport. We just know that's false."
Reilly's book is a response to the hugely popular left-leaning book, Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen. It corrected many things history textbooks got wrong about America.
When I grew up, Columbus was portrayed as simply a hero. His brutality and enslavement of Natives were ignored. But Columbus himself wrote about his slaves, saying, "Indians ... make all our food ... extract gold from the mines ... perform all other ... labors."
But this hits one of my pet peeves: Judging people who lived hundreds of years ago by contemporary standards. It’s just plain wrong! One example is slavery. To listen to leftists, you’d think America invented it. Baloney! Slavery has been around since the caves. The Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and other civilizations had slavery. It was common and part of their cultures. They didn’t give it a second thought.
Back to Stossel.
"The book was valid, right?" Stossel asked Reilly.
"I don't necessarily think your focus should be white and Native atrocities against one another in a sixth-grade class. The morality of today didn't exist anywhere in the world until about 60 years ago."
"What's the harm in sending a counter message?"
"You don't need a counter message," Reilly replied. "No one denies that whites and Native Americans killed each other. In 1970, in some Southern schools, people might have been taught a jingoistic view of American history, but the reverse has been true for 40 years."
He says the old myths don't justify new ones. Like the myth that Natives lived in harmony with nature. In reality, Natives manipulated their environment. To make farming easier, they set big forest fires to clear land.
"Burning alive hundreds of thousands of small animals and slower-running deer," Reilly added. "Probably killing members of other tribes ... modifying the environment more bluntly."
U.S. government curriculum guides claim Native Americans had "no prejudice" and "no major wars."
According to Reilly, that isn’t true. "It’s Nonsensical. In the Aztec capital, there were 90-foot towers of human skulls brought back from their defeated enemies. “Natives also took slaves and considered them "objects of wealth."
Yet the myth of peaceful Natives lives on.
"When myths persist, despite obvious objective reality," Reilly explained, "that's an indicator of a brain virus among people who want the myth to be real. You're looking at people saying the absolute opposite of reality."
“Why would today's teachers teach the opposite of reality?” Stossel queried.
"To me, it's just downstream from Marxism," says Reilly.
Marxism?
Yes! In colleges today, Karl Marx is the most assigned economist!
Despite the murderous failure of his philosophy, American college students are taught that capitalism and Western values are bad.
"Westerners and white people being so evil. Why is it so popular?" Stossel asked.
"I think that a lot of rich people don't like their father," Reilly quips. "There is a lot of dislike for our society among people who are pretty near the leadership class."
“I assume the people who teach these myths mean well,” Stossel says. They want minorities to feel included. But they should at least also teach that America's sins were not unique—that just about every society had slavery, cruel wars, and environmental destruction.
The seldom-taught good news is that now, the West leads the world in trying to make things better. And the much-maligned capitalist countries lead the world in both lifting people out of poverty and protecting the environment.
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Frank Victoria is an award-winning author and screenwriter. He’s been an Amazon bestseller with his recent book, The Founders’ Plot, a political thriller for our times. He donates proceeds of his books to Tunnels to Towers and Fisher House, helping military veterans and first responders. His novella, The Ultimate Bet is available on his website and Amazon. Check out his new website: FrankVictoriaAuthor.com © 2024 Frank Victoria
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