We Must Stop Kidding Ourselves

Columbus Day has gone by again with people putting the bad mouth on Christopher Columbus and wanting recognition of an Indigenous Peoples Day. Historically the reality is that Columbus was the point man for bringing western Europeans to the Western Hemisphere. However, Columbus did not discover America or even set foot on the North American continent, so he didn’t harm a single hair on the head of a North American indigenous person.

During his multiple trips to the Caribbean Islands, and as governor of Santa Domingo Island, he was not, what we would call today, a very nice man. What he was was a man of his time. In the 15^th and 16^th centuries, western Europeans were a very brutal collection of nation states. These nation states committed the same kinds of brutality against each other as they did against the Caribbean indigenous people and later the indigenous people in Central and North America. Throughout the history of mankind, conquering people took the land of the conquered people until the 20^th century. Generally speaking, the North American indigenous peoples were the last major victims of how humans had behaved from the beginning of human history.

After World War I and World War II, Americans and their allies, except Russia, did not keep the countries that were conquered. After WWII, for the first time in human history, America helped the conquered enemies rebuild their nations. The only land America kept was the land in which the thousands of American soldiers were buried from these conflicts. By 15^th, 16^th, 17^th, 18^th, and 19^th centuries standards, Germany, Italy, Japan, and many Pacific Islands should be owned by America. It is the American exceptionalism that set a new standard for international behavior.

The Democrats seem to think they can erase history; well they can’t.

Today, there is a considerable amount of wrong-headed thinking going on. Changing the names of Army installations because they were named after Confederate generals was just plain stupid. It is really stupid because the people pushing these changes were Democrats and so were the generals they are now ashamed of. The Democrats seem to think they can erase history; well they can’t. Those generals were just as American as any Union Army general; they just disagreed with the direction America was taking in their time. They were men of their time, no more and no less.

We are men and women of our time, and our behavior is based on the standards of our time. It is totally illogical to try to apply our standards to the men and women of history. Certain misguided men and women of our time think we are so much better than the men and women of history. I’ve got news for you; we are not! We are in many ways just as brutal as our ancestors, maybe more so.

Our ancestors killed each other with knives, swords. primitive guns, and anything else they could get their hands on. They had slaves which they often mistreated.

We have women and children slaves (sex trafficking) in America today, and for the most part we are doing little to stop it

Well folks, I’ve got some bad news for you. We have women and children slaves (sex trafficking) in America today, and for the most part we are doing little to stop it. We are allowing more than 100,000 Americans to die by illegal drugs and we are doing little to stop it. And worse than anything our ancestors did, we are intentionally killing more than 600,000 unborn or newly born children every single year. By the way, former President Clinton (a staunch supporter of abortion) just told us we must allow illegal immigration because America’s birth rate is down. Is he really that dumb?

No, we are no less brutal than our pre-20^th century ancestors. We are just better at hiding things by pretending that none of this happened. History is what it is, and we can only hope we learned something from it.

But we have to stop kidding ourselves. Human history is history, and Americans of today owe nobody anything for what happened in the past. Those in the past acted appropriately for their times. We must act appropriately for our time, which is to whatever it takes to Make America Great Again.

After a 55 year career as a professional pilot in the military, in law enforcement, in the private sector, and in federal civil service, I am now retired.

In many of these positions I repeatedly took an oath to defend the United States Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.