Columbus sailed around half the world- bumped into an island and went home; told the world what he discovered, faded into obscurity. Judging his personality is immaterial and disparaging his leadership qualities in order to repulse children in a classroom is an insult to the whole concept of education. Lincoln, however, was a president, who like those before and after him advanced governmental policy and programs that affect the lives of the citizens of the country both in his present and future directly. People like Lincoln, Stalin, Washington, Roosevelt, Churchill, the Caesars, need to be studied and evaluated in order to see what they did right or wrong and why (if possible) so that historical knowledge can direct our own future accordingly. For example, failure to read Murray Rothbard’s “America’s Great Depression” which outlines economic mistakes in the Roosevelt administration has caused our present government to repeat the same mistakes FDR made.

HOWEVER, the Western “exploiters” or “colonizers” of the New World and Africa and Asia also took a lot of people out of their Stone Age or Medieval brutal existence, albeit at an often terrible price. The descendants of the slaves or mineworkers or concubines … live better because of these (greedy) colonial exploiters.

The big joke in the narrative is that gunpowder, the evil weapon of the white man, was not invented by whites!

By the way, since Amerigo Vespucci was an Italian, we should rename the Continent – perhaps Obamia or Obamaland comes to mind.