Columbus Day, again

To be perfectly honest, I find a holiday like Columbus Day shameful.

Oh, I have nothing against holidays. In fact, if it were up to me, there would be at least one holiday per month, without exception, and I would have no qualms about finding rather innocuous reasons for having them. In March, we should all be able to celebrate the Vernal Equinox, if nothing else. In August, we should simply have a Holiday of Holidays, if nothing else. Yes, every month deserves to have a holiday, and not one of those wimpy floating ones, but a real Monday holiday as it should be.

Of course, if we're going to take this approach, I would insist that each month have a holiday that is meaningful and mostly -- and I emphasize, mostly -- inoffensive to the population. You see, we could declare, say, St. Patrick's Day as a national holiday, but that would be partial to the Irish. We could have a religious holiday in August, but this would be disrespecting of non-Christians. I'm sure, though, that it wouldn't take long to find a Monday that was acceptable to everyone. After all, we only need to have a will to have a way.

Columbus Day, in all due respect, is not one of thoses days. Yes, I know that his intentions were honorable, that he merely wanted to find an alternative to the status quo of his day, but the way he went about it and the results of his personal policies made live more than difficult for millions of people, and we're talking about millions of people who never had and no longer have a voice in their own demise.

Yes, Columbus Day honors the overtaking of different cultures for no other reason than one believed that one's own culture was the best the world had to offer combined with the arrogance of believing that white, Western Europeans were in a better position to decide what was good for the world than any other peoples are the face of the earth.

In the meantime, we've come to realize that Columbus really didn't get it right, that he didn't understand the world with which he was confronted, and that he represented a way of thinking that derided and suppressed any way of understanding the world that didn't conform to their own.

No,I don't believe there were any evil intentions. No, I believe that Columbus and his crew's intentions were good. But, at the same time, I believe that they simply failed to recognize that those who were already here deserved to be treated with the same respect as any other human being on the planet.

Unfortunately, we didn't get it then, and it's quite obvious we don't get it even now. We may never learn, even if I hope that I'm wrong.