That river was proximately named after a ship. Ultimately after the man, of course.
Alta Washington?
The lionization of Columbus started just after the War of Independence, possibly even before. Columbia was a poetic name for the US in those early days. That was the reason Gray’s ship had the name. Also why DC was named for him. And about 40 cities, towns, and villages in the US.
(Bold mine.)
I understood that reference. 
I don’t think Christopher Columbus should be celebrated.
True, but leading to an obvious question: can anything honoring any person or group from history, other than recent history, be left standing, if we’re determined to destroy things built by/for those who promoted slavery or other horrible things?
As a basic fact, for most of human history, powerful nations conquered wherever they could conquer and enslaved whoever they could enslave. The Babylonians did so, and the Egpytians, the Hittites, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Mongols, the Vikings, and many others. Further, it was generally the successful conquerors and enslavers who grew powerful enough to build monuments.
Shoudl we break up the Stele of Hammurabi? Tear down the Egyptian pyramids? Vandalize the Parthenon? Or can we at some point reach peace with the fact that certain people did terrible things but were also major figures in humanity’s story and that it’s just not reasonable to smash all objects associated with them.
In fact, part of the reason ancient history is so sparse is because each new generation did decide to destroy the monuments of the previous ones. One of the early Muslim rulers of Egypt attempted to destroy the Giza pyramids, but it was too big of a job. The Pharaohs of Egypt and emperors of the Ancient Near East were mostly every bit as evil bastards as any despot and dictator today, but now we are thrilled to find new lost bits of statues or inscription that managed to make it past the wrecking crews. If there are historians thousands of years from now, they will be just as thrilled to find bits of Confederate momuments as we are to find statues of Ramses the Great–and give as little of a rat’s ass about the evil they did.
Iconoclasim is always a crime against the future.
You are ignoring the fact that it was our own civilization and our own nation that put up these monuments, we did so only a relatively short time ago, and it was done for political reasons that still have great importance today. Leaving the monuments of past civilizations is fine. But determining what people are honored by our own civilization is something we are allowed to do. Should we put back the statue of George IIIthat was toppled during the Revolution out of respect for history? Should the French put back a replica of the Bastille? Should the former Soviet satellites of Eastern Europe put back the statues of Lenin that were toppled? Should the Iraqis put back the statues of Saddam out of respect for history?
This is frankly a nonsensical argument. We can leave the monuments of ancient civilizations that no longer have political relevance. We can dispose of the memorials that have political importance today.
There’s an argument to be made that statues of discredited historical figures be moved to museums or other out of the way locations because of their historical interest. But having them on prominent display in a place of honor indicates that we do in fact continue to honor them. There is no reason to maintain such statues and monuments on prominent display if we, as a people, decide we no longer wish to honor them.
Sure. But the people, as a whole, need to make that decision. Not a destructive subset that can round up a group of vandals.
And it’s not a decision that needs to be made right this second in the heat of the moment. 3 months of quarantine along with all the associated stress, doesn’t make for the most rational on the spot decision makers.
“Smash all objects”? It seems to me that it’s difficult to have a reasonable conversation with straw men.
Objects with historical significance can always go into a history museum. Objects with artistic significance can always go into an art museum. Not all objects have to remain in a place of honor when they no longer represent something we as a society no longer honor.
And we don’t have to be able to draw general principles from the case of Confederate monuments. They are a very particular case of relatively recent monuments put up to terrorize a segment of the population. They’re equivalent to monuments to Hitler or Stalin in their home countries. Fuck the Confederacy is a perfectly good, moral, and ethical principle to live by when dealing with these monuments.
It’s been pointed out over and over in this thread that honoring somebody specifically for the evil things they did is different from honoring somebody for good things, even if they also did evil ones.
Plus which, when you get far enough back in time, leaving monuments standing isn’t honoring a person any longer; it’s saving information important to archaeology, important to our and later understanding of the time.
They can find them in museums. In the back room or the basement or the display about slavery and Jim Crow.
Seconding that post from Colibri.
But somewhat disagreeing with this one. (Or, on re-reading, maybe agreeing with it – on first reading I thought that Colibri was saying we shouldn’t maintain them in museums because doing so would honor them, but maybe the opposite was meant.) The statues can be, as I said above, moved to storage rooms instead of put on prominent display; or they can be put on prominent display, not as a place of honor, but as a place of shame, as part of displays of the horrors of what they supported. The fact that those statues were put in places of honor, and the reasons this was done at the time when it was done, and the impact on those who were forced to use public places under the publicly praised monumental gaze of those who wanted them enslaved, are also part of the historical record.
In case this still needs clarification, I don’t object to displaying such statues or objects in museums or specific sites where context can be provided. I don’t have a problem with the display of Nazi memorabilia in an exhibit about WWII. Hungary set up a special Memento Park where they moved or replicated statues from the Communist Era. From the architect:
The fact that these people were once honored is a part of history and should not be forgotten. But we don’t have to keep their memorials in a place of honor. We can move them to other places where they can be seen as historical artifacts rather than as a detrimental political message.
Ah. We’re in agreement, then. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
The first voyage of Columbus is one of the most significant events in world history, and deserves to be commemorated. But that doesn’t have to be by honoring Columbus himself. Columbus is possibly the most overrated historical figures ever. He’s undoubtedly the luckiest crackpot in history.
Columbus not only accidentally discovered something that he wasn’t looking for, he adamantly and blindly denied its actual significance for his entire life. Up until his death he insisted he had discovered parts of Asia, believing that Japan and China were just a little bit farther. In fact, this is why the continents ended up being named for Amerigo Vespucci, since he was the first to propose that they were actually a “New World,” and not previously known continents.
And if Columbus had never existed, Europeans would have found the Americas within a few years anyway. The Portuguese navigator Pedro Cabral found Brazil in 1500, just eight years after Columbus, when he accidentally sailed too far west when rounding Africa on his way to India. Fishermen from Europe were already visiting the Grand Banks off Canada, and John Cabot explored North America in 1497. European ships were out everywhere in the Atlantic by the late 1400s, and it was only a matter of time before one of them hit the Americas.
Columbus had some positive attributes. He was undeniably brave, but then a lot of assholes are. He was persistent, although that could also be called obsessive. He was learned about classical sources on geography, but he cherry picked his sources to give him the answers he wanted. He was a great navigator, being able to find his way over vast distances, but he was a terrible sailor, losing his flagship Santa Maria due to carelessness on his first voyage, and his entire fleet of four ships on his disastrous fourth voyage, ending up shipwrecked on Jamaica for almost a year while the Spanish governor of Hispaniola refused to send ships to rescue him because he was so detested there because of his earlier misrule.
But aside from personal courage, Columbus’s personal character was detestable. He was cruel and greedy, personally instituting the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the most vicious exploitation of the natives. His own Spanish subjects in Hispaniola came to hate him, and after being sent back to Spain in disgrace he became persona non grata in his former domain and prohibited from returning to it. He was a pathological liar, though its sometimes hard to tell where delusion ended and lying began. He constantly misrepresented and exaggerated his findings, even in his own journals. On his first voyage he offered a reward to the first member of the crew to sight land, then claimed that he saw a light when they were still too far away for one to be visible in order to get the reward himself and stiff the crewman who actually first saw it.
Next to go, a statue of the Boy Scouts founder. (In one of those weird coincidences, while I was reading that story a commercial came on the TV of a lawyer fishing for people who want to sue the Boy Scouts for sex abuse.)
We can look at historical figures and assess whether they are famous for any other achievement than instituting, defending, expanding, or profiting from slavery. We can can also assess whether the monument was erected to celebrate or commemorate those same things.
By that rubric, nobody would tear down the Egyptian Pyramids or any other similar artifacts of antiquity. You can be assured by the plain observation that nobody is talking about doing that except people who are upset that Confederate statues are going down.
You’ve been whooshed big time. The comments about the Pyramids are in fact sarcastic ones from people who are upset that statues are coming down.
Okay, I’ll cop to that. But it hasn’t been long since people were seriously supporting it for different ideological reasons.
Isis would also destroy all statues of any kind, as well as any works of art depicting people or other living beings.