Anachronistic views about Christopher Columbus as worse than ISIS leader al-Baghdadi

[conon394]

Fine it is a holiday, That and since my wife now work's for the USDA get's to take it with pay - I all for it.

But since he was Ass Hat administrator and could not navigate his way out of paper bag, and piss poor at court politics and only lived because he ran into land where he no expectation of it and used the worst estimate of the size of the earth to justify his fool's errand... I vote for just have the same day off but calling Fool, Idiot day.

[Cyclops]

Maybe Columbus Day could be used for compulsory immunisations?

[TWWolfe]

Maybe Columbus Day could be used for compulsory immunisations?

thematically ppropriate at least

[Greyblades]

I apologize for the necroing of this thread but I find myself somewhat perplexed at this statement in the OP:

Should his achievements as an explorer and voyage symbolic of the beginning of a new era of colonialism and the Age of Sail and exploration be diminished by the fact that he did nasty stuff that a majority of his contemporaries happily engaged in?

Now I am by no means a proponent of judging the past by the standards of the present, indeed I find such views largely insufferable, I have to take issue with the idea that the actions of Columbus was the norm for his time.

While many of those who would continue the exploration of the Americas were just as bad, I have to contend that to the people of his homeland at the time his actions among the natives of Hispaniola similarly were equally appalling, as evidenced by Bartolome de la Casa's A Short Account Of The Destruction Of The Indies and the subsequent Valladolid Debate which resulted in the Leyes Nuevas.
While the attitudes may have changed in the proceeding century the actions of Colombus were not the norm of the society he lived in.