Columbus Was Great Benefactor of the West

Christopher Columbus receives more than his share of bad press nowadays, a recent example being David Brown's screed in Saturday's Crimson, I would like to invite your readers to consider some facts which will make possible a more objective assessment of Columbus and his achievement.

On the existential side, consider the vast number of material benefits that Western civilization has brought us. Science and technological progress have tamed hunger and disease, drastically reduced the necessity of physical labor, and brought us to a higher standard of living than any seen in human history-including, students take note, the division of labor which allows some people to devote their time entirely to academic pursuits (and to bashing Western civilization). Contrast these benificent achievements with the age-old sorrows of malnutrition, disease, and back-breaking physical drudgery that plagued the peoples Columbus encountered in the New World. On the basis of physical quality of life alone, we should feel solemn gratitude to Columbus for enabling Western civilization to spread the benefits of its scientific prowess to this half of the globe.

But consider also the moral side--in particular, the irony of judging Columbus' and the Europeans' faults, including plunder and slavery, by a moral criterion developed in the West--the sanctity of human life and evinced by their practice of slavery, intertribal warfare, and even human sacrifice. It is Western civilization--specifically, its values of reason, individualism, and freedom--which has made the greatest progress in history in eradicating such horrors from the face of the earth. Ear from smearing the man who introduced such a life-giving culture to this hemisphere with fatuous invocations of Hitler and Stalin. We should hail Columbus as one of history's greatest benefactors. --Barry D. Wood,   Member, Harvard Objectivist Club