Happy Columbus Day!

The United States government recognizes 11 different federal holidays, one of which is Columbus Day, celebrated on the second Monday in October.

Or is it?

In recent years, many states and other jurisdictions have stopped celebrating the Italian explorer who completed four dangerous voyages from Spain to the Americas, crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a series of small wooden ships more than 500 years ago. Why is that? Well, according to liberal educators and historians, Christopher Columbus did more damage than he did good.

Forget about his daring trip aboard the Nina, the Pinta, and his flagship, the Santa Maria when Columbus “sailed the ocean blue in 1492.” And so what if he was the first in a long line of European explorers who “discovered” the New World and established colonies there, while introducing potatoes, tomatoes, and tobacco to the Old Country?

Historical revisionists, applying today’s morals (or lack thereof) to Columbus, now accuse him of racism, exploitation, and genocide for unwittingly exposing the people of the West Indies to European diseases. As a result, only 16 states and several U.S. territories – ironically, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands are two of them – currently celebrate Columbus Day, others choosing to replace it with the more palatable and politically correct Indigenous Peoples Day.

Now, don’t get wrong, I have absolutely no problem with celebrating the contributions of Native Americans, but do we have to do so at Christopher Columbus’ expense? Celebrating both holidays on the same day seems like the optimal solution to me, but there are those who won’t be satisfied until every statue of Columbus is torn down, every town named after him is changed, and Christopher Columbus is consigned to the dustbin of history alongside such villains and mass murderers as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao Zedong.

Likewise, these same Progressive nutjobs won’t rest until George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are demonized for owning slaves, and Abraham Lincoln is universally condemned for not freeing them sooner. And who knows what “dirt” they will use to discredit other American icons such as Teddy Roosevelt (he shot wild animals on his African safari), Dwight Eisenhower (he initially lied about Francis Gary Powers), and Ronald Reagan (the Iran-Contra affair).

Meanwhile, some other heroes are considered sacrosanct, such as Martin Luther King Jr. What a remarkable and yet, deeply flawed man he was! Dr. King had the singular courage to lead the Civil Rights movement, and without him, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 might never have been signed into law. However, even Dr. King had his faults such as being a womanizer who reportedly slept with one of his mistresses the night before his assassination.

That revelation isn’t meant to disparage Dr. King in any shape, manner, or form because he was a truly great man. It is simply a way of reminding critics and naysayers alike that every man, woman, and child has their foibles as well as a long list of failures. Even the Rev. Billy Graham received some flak for befriending President Nixon with whom he shared an antisemitic conversation, something that he sincerely and repeatedly apologized for later.

The bottom line is that no one – from Christopher Columbus to MLK Jr. to Billy Graham – is perfect, so can we please cut each other a little slack? The only alternative is to apply the same impossible standards to ourselves in which case I, for one, would come up embarrassingly short.

“Judge [condemn] not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Matthew 7:1-5 (NKJV)