US Election 2004

Last year, attorney Tom Bowden’s book The Enemies of Christopher Columbus  was published.  In the book, he explores the significance of Columbus and the motivations of those who attack him today.  In a recent piece, Tom Bowden wrote:

On a deeper level, therefore, Columbus Day celebrates the rational core of Western civilization, which flourished in the New World like a potbound plant liberated from its confining shell, demonstrating to the world what greatness is possible to man at his best.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose philosophers and mathematicians, men such as Aristotle, Archimedes, and Euclid, displaced otherworldly mysticism by discovering the laws of logic and mathematical relationships, demonstrating to mankind that the universe is knowable and predictable.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose scientists, men such as Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, banished primitive superstitions by discovering natural laws through the scientific method, expanding the reach of man’s scrutiny to the farthest galaxy and the tiniest atom.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose political geniuses, men such as John Locke and the Founding Fathers, showed how bloody tribal warfare and religious strife can be supplanted by constitutional republics devoted to protecting life, liberty, property, and the selfish pursuit of individual happiness.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose entrepreneurs, men such as Rockefeller, Ford, and Gates, transformed an inhospitable wilderness populated by frightened savages into a wealthy nation of self-confident producers served by highways, power plants, computers, and thousands of other life-enhancing products.

On Columbus Day, in sum, we celebrate Western civilization with the utter certainty that it is good according to an objective standard: man’s life.  [T. Bowden, Columbus Day: The Cure for 9/11, Capitalism Magazine, 10/5/2004]

Regarding the book, philosopher Harry Binswanger is quoted on the publisher’s site:

The attacks on Columbus are attacks on civilization itself, but this very readable book is a spirited defense of both. Marshalling "unmentionable" facts suppressed by the multiculturalist establishment, Tom Bowden lays before the reader's eyes the primitive, sordid, brutal nature of savage life and shows why the American Indians should revere Columbus as their liberator. Championing the Objectivist standard of value--man's life--Mr. Bowden dispels the fog of cultural relativism to demonstrate the objective superiority of Western civilization.

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