It’s become trendy in recent years to dismiss Christopher Columbus as simply the instrument by which native American cultures were destroyed by. I don’t buy it and here’s why, the spread of western civilization represented the spread of reason, science, and self-responsibility. 15th century Europe was not ruled by fear and panic about the natural forces surrounding them, nor did they rely on invented rituals and elaborate tales to deal with the forces they did not understand. Tribal cultures could have evolved a modern understanding of nature and the forces of nature, but they simply did not.

Looking past the abuses, and there were many, to the core values that the Europeans brought, which ultimately evolved to American values, and well there a lot to celebrate about the achievements of Columbus.