Columbus Day Under Assault

CALLER: Oh, great. Great.

RUSH: It’s not what you’re gonna want to hear.

CALLER: Maybe. (chuckles) I think he was a great, courageous visionary. I think he’s a great role model for today’s youth. He was an entrepreneur. If he didn’t come here, if he didn’t bump into America, who knows how the world would be different, but it would definitely be different.

RUSH: I know. We wouldn’t have cigars.

CALLER: (laughing) That’s right we wouldn’t have all this great food. We wouldn’t have freedom, because he really laid the foundation for that here. And I’m so frustrated when I hear only the bad things about him and all the garbage that they taught in the schools about him, and so I’d like to ask everybody to put their flag out today and maybe make a good dinner for their family and celebrate Columbus Day.

CALLER: Thank you.

RUSH: You bet. I’m glad you called. From the Rasmussen Reports Web page: ‘Twenty-four percent of Americans believe we should not honor Columbus with a national holiday.’ This is the result of government and multicultural education winning. From, let’s see, where’s this from? The Washington Post. Boyce Rensberger, November 1, 1992. We went back to the archives. This is, what, seventeen…?

Man, oh, man that’s seventeen years ago. ‘The chief rival position — called the Columbian theory — argues that there was no syphilis in Europe until Columbus took it there. Advocates of this view agree that ‘leprosy’ was a mixture of true leprosy with other sexually transmitted diseases, but that none of them was syphilis. More likely, they argue, the other disease was gonorrhea,’ which my health teacher in junior high be pronounced gong-gorrhea. ‘Question: Did Syphilis Sail to Europe With Columbus and Crew?’ And they’ve been debating this.

You know, this is part of the multicultural curriculum now; that Columbus introduced racism, sexism, bigotry, homophobia, environmental destruction, syphilis — and horses which brought their own problems. So they’ve actually been debating this: ‘Did Syphilis Sail to Europe With Columbus and Crew? — In the year 1500, not long after Christopher Columbus and his crews began returning from their voyages to the New World, an epidemic of syphilis erupted in Europe. Shortly thereafter, more epidemics flared and swept across the continent, raging with much the same impact as AIDS does today.’ Remember, this is 1992 where this story is from.

So the theory there is that Columbus caught syphilis from the Indians or whoever it was he interacted with down there, and he and his crew took it back to Europe with him — and there are countless stories in the stack today about what teachers are teaching kids about Columbus and it’s basically the multicultural curriculum that he was racist, sexist, and bigoted, homophobic, and brought all of those things to the New World on his voyage. This is why I say, you know: A lot of your kids are in school listening to the traditions and institutions that make this country great get trashed each and every day, and it’s now gotten to the point that 24% think we should not honor or have a Christopher Columbus Day.