In 1492, 3 ships, the Pinta, the Nina, and the Santa-Maria came upon land previously almost unknown to Europeans. The man commanding this ship was named Christopher Columbus, an Italian sailor working for the Spanish. He had discovered the Americas for Europe, for better or for worse. Now, in America we celebrate the day Europe discovered America, though some of us believe that we should not. I, however, believe that Columbus's achievement and spite the nitpickers that believe otherwise.

One of the reasons these people say that Columbus Day should not be celebrated is that the culture of the Native Americans was pretty much destroyed. Well I say, why do you care? It's not as if they had a civilization of great ideas and genius thinkers. With a few exceptions, they were hunter-gatherers, who lived in roaming tribes that didn't have the wheel or even a written language. They may have destroyed a culture, but they replaced it with a highly sophisticated and technologically advanced civilization built on geniuses such as Plato and Socrates, ideas from across more than 20,846,000 square miles. Though there were some civilizations and two very large empires, they lacked the genius that Europe had achieved.

Columbus haters nitpick over some other small reasons. They say that African slavery increased because they needed workers in America. This is untrue. By the time Columbus had returned and sparked the excitement for the New World the Portuguese had already started the slave trade which was cheaper than servant workers and therefore would have expanded anyway. They also talk about how peaceful and good the natives were. Here's the problem with that, they weren't! Humans are a violent race by nature and there were wars fights and death. They bash Columbus again and again for reasons that don't even make any sense.

The worst thing is that when they attack Columbus, it's not just Columbus they're bashing. They're bashing all of Western Culture, our culture! Columbus day isn't a memorial to a European accidentally finding a new landmass, it is honoring our European forefathers that made the Americas into a place of technology. It's honoring the fact that the Europeans brought culture to a level in mere decades, that would take the Natives millenia to achieve on their own. And among us, we have people who are saying that this is bad? If I follow them correctly they want to set us back, say, at the least millenia, the Natives would be at about Roman technologic and cultural age, right now.

So, should we celebrate Columbus Day? The Natives lost all their culture and were destroyed, but what is the loss of a few, small, non-technologically advanced civilizations compared to the gains given from Europe. Maybe slavery did increase, but not because of Columbus. We didn't lose the peace-loving Natives, they were human and thus susceptible to violence. Why do these people want to drop back into the Roman era. We should celebrate Columbus and the Western Culture he brought, and not spite the good they did. Go America, Go Columbus.