ON COLUMBUS DAY, CELEBRATE WESTERN CIVILIZATION, NOT MULTICULTURALISM

By Michael S. Berliner

    Columbus Day approaches and this year has a special meaning. Christopher
Columbus is a carrier of Western Civilization and the very values attacked
by terrorists on September 11. To the "politically correct," Columbus Day is
an occasion to be mourned. They have mourned, they have attacked, and they
have intimidated schools across the country into replacing Columbus Day
celebrations with "ethnic diversity" days.

    The politically correct view is that Columbus did not discover America,
because people had lived here for thousands of years. Worse yet, it's
claimed, the main legacy of Columbus is death and destruction. Columbus is
routinely vilified as a symbol of slavery and genocide, and the celebration
of his arrival likened to a celebration of Hitler and the Holocaust. The
attacks on Columbus are ominous, because the actual target is Western
civilization.

    Did Columbus "discover" America? Yes--in every important respect. This
does not mean that no human eye had been cast on America before Columbus
arrived. It does mean that Columbus brought America to the attention of the
civilized world, i.e., to the growing, scientific civilizations of Western
Europe. The result, ultimately, was the United States of America. It was
Columbus' discovery for Western Europe that led to the influx of ideas and
people on which this nation was founded--and on which it still rests. The
opening of America brought the ideas and achievements of Aristotle, Galileo,
Newton, and the thousands of thinkers, writers, and inventors who followed.

    Prior to 1492, what is now the United States was sparsely inhabited,
unused, and undeveloped. The inhabitants were primarily hunter-gatherers,
wandering across the land, living from hand-to-mouth and from day-to-day.
There was virtually no change, no growth for thousands of years. With rare
exception, life was nasty, brutish, and short: there was no wheel, no
written language, no division of labor, little agriculture and scant
permanent settlement; but there were endless, bloody wars. Whatever the
problems it brought, the vilified Western culture also brought enormous,
undreamed-of benefits, without which most of today's Indians would be
infinitely poorer or not even alive.

    Columbus should be honored, for in so doing, we honor Western
civilization. But the critics do not want to bestow such honor, because
their real goal is to denigrate the values of Western civilization and to
glorify the primitivism, mysticism, and collectivism embodied in the tribal
cultures of American Indians. They decry the glorification of the West as
"cultural imperialism" and  "Eurocentrism." We should, they claim, replace
our reverence for Western civilization with multi-culturalism, which regards
all cultures (including vicious tyrannies) as morally equal. In fact, they
aren't. Some cultures are better than others: a free society is better than
slavery; reason is better than brute force as a way to deal with other men;
productivity is better than stagnation. In fact, Western civilization stands
for man at his best. It stands for the values that make human life possible:
reason, science, self-reliance, individualism, ambition, productive
achievement. The values of Western civilization are values for all men; they
cut across gender, ethnicity, and geography. We should honor Western
civilization not for the ethnocentric reason that some of us happen to have
European ancestors but because it is the objectively superior culture.

    Underlying the political collectivism of the anti-Columbus crowd is a
racist view of human nature. They claim that one's identity is primarily
ethnic: if one thinks his ancestors were good, he will supposedly feel good
about himself; if he thinks his ancestors were bad, he will supposedly feel
self-loathing. But it doesn't work; the achievements or failures of one's
ancestors are monumentally irrelevant to one's actual worth as a person.
Only the lack of a sense of self leads one to look to others to provide what
passes for a sense of identity. Neither the deeds nor misdeeds of others are
his own; he can take neither credit nor blame for what someone else chose to
do. There are no racial achievements or racial failures, only individual
achievements and individual failures. One cannot inherit moral worth or
moral vice. "Self-esteem through others" is a self-contradiction.

    Thus the sham of "preserving one's heritage" as a rational life goal.
Thus the cruel hoax of "multicultural education" as an antidote to racism:
it will continue to create more racism. Individualism is the only
alternative to the racism of political correctness. We must recognize that
everyone is a sovereign entity, with the power of choice and independent
judgment. That is the ultimate value of Western civilization, and it should
be proudly proclaimed.
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Dr. Berliner is a member of the Board of Directors of the Ayn Rand Institute
in Marina del Rey, California.  The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn
Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.  Write to Berliner at
medialink@aynrand.org

For more information go to http://www.aynrand.org

THE AYN RAND INSTITUTE

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