Columbus Day

Even a quick scan of Wikipedia shows that Columbus Day is widely controversial.  It's been renamed "Indigenous People's Day" in some parts of South America, for example.  The status of Columbus Day is a little ambiguous as a national holiday in the U.S., and it's not even recognized in every state.  The reasons are pretty clear: An honest appraisal of the acts of Columbus and other European explorers that were presented as heroic in my school history books are wrong or at least seriously incomplete.  Columbus, Cortez, and others were exploiters who often acted with reckless cruelty to an extent that seems hard to imagine.  A second reason is that the character of Columbus himself seems to be anything but heroic—he must have been brave and visionary, but was apparently an unrestrained and egotistical self-promoter.  I admit that historical revisionism makes me dizzy.  Part of the reason for the vertigo is that when the old propaganda is replaced by a new version of the truth, there is an obvious basis for questioning the new view.  Is what's new really true, or is it likewise tainted with subjectivity that serves the agenda of a replacement ideology?  When the ideological winds shift, aren't we tempted to entertain radical relativism—that it's all a matter of interpretation?  Such a leap must be incorrect, but the flow of ideas seems to sweep us toward such conclusions.  Finding a solid basis for interpreting history takes hard work.  Giving up on myths and accepting new views hedged by uncertainty is unsettling, but it's all in the service of critical thinking, of growing up, and of becoming more honestly educated.