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Is Moral Truth Relative? If So, Why Judge Columbus?
Columbus Day is an opportunity to confront what we believe about morality and truth
It’s Columbus Day — or, as is becoming more popular to say instead, Indigenous People’s Day. Those who favor the latter generally have very strong feelings against the former.
Christopher Columbus has, in recent decades, become a symbol of white European exploitation and oppression. He is everything that woke-minded social justice progressives despise.
That Columbus did (and said) some troubling things is beyond dispute. After Columbus encountered the Arawaks, the native inhabitants of the land he claimed for Spain, he wrote the following of them in his journal:
“They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
Yeah, it’s understandable why some don’t believe such a guy deserves a holiday.
Nevertheless, all the moral denunciations of Columbus beg a question that is too often ignored or sidestepped in our society:
What is the basis of any of our moral judgments?
