Telling The Truth - At A Cost

COLUMBUS DAY is going out of style, a victim of political correctness. Christopher Columbus has(had) always been an American hero, until recently, when the liberals began to get a hold of him. Essentially, we have always, until recently, been lied to in public school history classes, which traditionally depicted Columbus as nothing but a courageous, exploratory hero, and the Untied States as nothing other than a shining city on a hill, embodying the essence of virtue. The truth, we know, but are only now beginning to accept, is altogether different. Thanks to our politically correct malcontents, we are belatedly taking baby steps in the direction of factual accuracy. Columbus initiated the slave trade,and murdered hundreds of thousands of people in the Caribbean, even though, as he says in his journal, he admired their beauty and friendliness, traits which, he writes, "will make them excellent servants." He was far too busy extorting gold to actually discover America, let alone find an efficient route to the orient. Even his employers, Ferdinand and Isabella, were appalled. So was his priest, who was at his side throughout, and kept his own diary. The priest was concerned about the possibility of time in purgatory for the entire crew. For Indians, whom the politically correct call "native Americans", which Indians generally find patronizing and condescending, celebrating Columbus Day is tantamount to celebrating Pearl Harbor Day. When I was teaching American history, in my overly zealous crusade to teach truth and consequences be damned, I lost several jobs. I should've taken baby steps, seeing as how I worked in the south. Like I tried without success to tell the administrators, it aint my fault that Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine were not Christians, or that James Madison feared democracy, and crafted the constitution specifically to avoid having one. Our non Christian founders preferred science over superstition, and there is nothing we can do about it two hundred years later, try though we do. Here's a possible solution: divide history in twain, after the fashion of our polarized nation. Let the conservatives use traditional texts, with all the attendant mythology, according to which the cherry tree comes chopping down, Washington kneels and prays at Valley forge, and the pioneers head west for the express purpose of bringing Jesus and civilization to the savages. Students of a politically correct liberal complainer bent can take refuge in another art of the building, and denigrate American greatness to their heart's content. And if they want, they can even make up some blasphemous crap about Jefferson cutting a bible into shreds, calling it a "pile of dung", and putting the parts he liked into his own little book, the "Jefferson Bible". If the teacher can't consequently keep her job, she'll at least have her fellow liberal idiots to blame.