I’m sometimes impressed by famous people.
Like, for example, movie actor John Wayne, who made the following statements about the historical tendency of Europeans to sail in small ships across large oceans, discover foreign lands, and enslave the people who live there. Here’s a snippet of a May 1971 interview in Playboy magazine, when the famous cowboy actor was asked to comment on the plight of Native Americans.
PLAYBOY: For years American Indians have played an important — if subordinate — role in your Westerns. Do you feel any empathy with them?
WAYNE: I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them, if that’s what you’re asking. Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.
PLAYBOY: Weren’t the Indians — by virtue of prior possession — the rightful owners of the land?
WAYNE: Look, I’m sure there have been inequalities. If those inequalities are presently affecting any of the Indians now alive, they have a right to a court hearing. But what happened 100 years ago in our country can’t be blamed on us today.
PLAYBOY: Indians today are still being dehumanized on reservations.
WAYNE: I’m quite sure that the concept of a government-run reservation would have an ill effect on anyone. But that seems to be what the socialists are working for now — to have everyone cared for from cradle to grave.
Where did all this socialism come from?
Is it possible that Christopher Columbus brought socialism to the New World, along with a bunch of other diseases?
In 1492 Christopher Columbus, and a crew consisting largely of sailors forced into service by the Spanish Crown, sailed happily off on a trip to the East Indies in three borrowed boats: the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. Instead of landing in the Indies, however, they bumped into a continent that happened to be standing in his way.
Nevertheless, Columbus thought they were in Asia. In fact, they were on a beach in the Bahamas. An understandable mistake, because both places offer drinks with little umbrellas in them.
Then Columbus made slaves of friendly people he met in America.
From the entry in his journal of 12 October 1492:
“Many of the men I have seen have scars on their bodies, and when I made signs to them to find out how this happened, they indicated that people from other nearby islands come to San Salvador to capture them; they defend themselves the best they can. I believe that people from the mainland come here to take them as slaves. They ought to make good and skilled servants, for they repeat very quickly whatever we say to them. I think they can very easily be made Christians, for they seem to have no religion.”
I really don’t think that sounds much like a socialist.
At any rate, the banks are all closed today, with signs on their doors: “Closed for Columbus Day.” The rest of us may still be at work, but the banks and the government offices are celebrating. More evidence, I suppose, that Columbus was probably not a Leftist.
Like John Wayne, I have no idea why the American government gave all that reservation land to Native Americans. Obviously, a case of creeping socialism.
I am not going to blame it on Columbus.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.