Posted on 09/09/2007 12:55:22 PM PDT by CTposterBoy
In roughly one month we will once again celebrate the memory of the Ultimate Liberal. No, that wouldn't be George Washington, who never told a lie, nor would it be Bill Clinton, who never told the truth -- nor would it even be Jimmy Carter, who never knew the difference. It would be a man from a long bygone era, one who epitomized what liberalism was all about long before the concept ever came into being in the sense we now know it.
This man was an Italian sailor named Cristoforo Colombo, whose name somehow got corrupted into Christopher Columbus by some historian who obviously didn't like Italian names. Not content with the accepted sea route to India which had been long proven to in fact get the traveler to that destination, Colombo began touting the idea of a new route to India which entailed sailing due west, even though it was common knowledge at the time that India lie to the east, not the west, of Europe, and despite having not so much as a shred of tangible evidence to back up his supposition. Unsuccessful at selling his fellow Italians on the idea, Colombo finally found potential takers in the Spanish monarchs Fernando and Isabel. (Not Ferdinand and Isabella. There go those #$^%&$% historians again!) With rhetoric that must have made Mario Cuomo look like an amateur by comparison, Colombo persuaded the king and queen of Spain to provide him with three ships: the Nina, the Pinta, and that which would serve as his flagship, the Santa Maria. His ships procured and outfitted, Colombo set sail.
When he set out, Colombo did not know where he was going. When he got there, he did not know where he was. And when he returned to Spain, he did not know where he had been. And, in true liberal fashion, he did all of this on government funding. Also, once again in true liberal fashion, he not only failed to accomplish his original mission, but along the way he took credit for the discovery of two continents he in fact had never even seen -- continents which would later be named for another Italian sailor named Amerigo Vespucci, whose name somehow got corrupted into Americus Vespucius. (Is anybody seeing a pattern here with these Latinized names? Apparently the historians of the day wanted us all to believe that these men, both of whom in fact were 15th-Century Italians, wore togas and olive wreaths and spent their spare time hanging around the Forum eating grapes and discussing philosophy with Marcus Aurelius.)
Continued at Radiofree West Hartford (click here)
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Bite me. Go back to Italy, Ireland, Mars or where ever the hell you're from.
ITALIANS changed their own names in coming here- not "historians".
And the great majority of green-clad drunks who you see on St. Patrick's Day aren't even Irish. The ones who truly loved their country stayed there.
The rest of them knew "suck" when they saw it, and never looked back on that decrepit old country.
The two Italians named did that? Didn't know the Aztecs kept a registry.
One word...humor.
If either Columbus or Vespucci wanted to talk to philosophers, they probably would have found contemporary Italian philosophers more interesting than Marcus Aurelius (who has been compared to Eeyore).
But you'd listen to Marcus because he was known to go medieval long before that was trendy.
Are you trying to cut the number of my drinking holidays?
Mrs art_rocks, “Hold myah beer.”
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