Editors note – Today, October 14, 2024, is Columbus Day. Here is a re-post of a piece I wrote which includes my commentary on Columbus Day from 2021.
Like many Italian Americans I recognize Columbus Day as a way to take pride in my Italian heritage.
Unfortunately, once again this year there are those would like to take Montana in the direction of other states like Hawaii, Oregon and South Dakota, in the elimination of Columbus Day.
Those voices seem willfully ignorant of a couple of important facts.
First, Columbus never set one foot in what we now call America.
Secondly, history is replete with examples of indigenous peoples in America conquering and taking neighboring tribes as slaves, stealing their land, brutalizing and raping women, engaging in human sacrifice and torture as well as committing atrocities including acts of cannibalism.
No racial or ethnic group is pure and innocent when it comes to treating fellow human beings badly. Those who constantly single out white Europeans as monsters while ignoring the atrocities committed by other groups and individuals do so mostly for selfish political reasons.
Their hypocrisy is clear to anyone interested in the facts.
So I would ask the local Great Falls finger pointers and virtue signalers how they feel about the fact that Clark himself held slaves and the Corps of Discovery helped open up the West to American expansion and the “exploitation” of indigenous peoples?
Where are the calls to eliminate the statues of Lewis and Clark in and around Great Falls?
Where are the demands to get rid of any mention of Lewis and Clark in our local celebrations or in the naming of local restaurants and other businesses and tourist sites?
Please, be consistent or be quiet.
Philip Faccenda – Proud First Generation Italian American“
POSTSCRIPT
Christopher Columbus wrote in his Lettera Rarissima, “Let those who are fond of blaming and finding fault, while they sit safely at home, ask, ‘Why did you not do thus and so?” “I wish they were on this voyage; I well believe that another voyage of a different kind awaits them, or our faith is naught.”
To quote a piece by John Hirschauer: “Contrary to the simplistic picture painted by academics, the indigenous cultures Columbus encountered were as assorted as those of any other peoples in history. While it might be true that some such cultures fit the nomadic, tranquil image pushed by the revisionists, not even close to all of them did. Which leads to an inevitable follow-up to those who would eliminate Columbus Day in favor of “Indigenous People’s Day. Which “indigenous people” do you have in mind? Is it the Kalinago people, who ate roasted human flesh, with a particular affinity for the remains of babies and fetuses? Is it the Aztecs, who killed an estimated 84,000 people in four days in their consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan?”
As historian Samuel Eliot Morison, in his book The Great Explorers noted, Columbus “had his flaws and his defects, but they were largely the defects of the qualities that made him great – his indomitable will, his superb faith in God and in his own mission. That will and faith make him a man worthy of this, the day on which we honor him.
The further we allow our country to drift towards the far left, the more apparent the hypocrisy of the American Neo Socialist movement becomes as it relates to basic economic realities.
Even right here in Great Falls it’s surprising how many times I hear and read local progressives implying, or just coming right out and saying, that corporations are at the root of all of our problems – even while those same folks continue buying, using, and consuming corporate goods and services 24/7/365.
“Corporations are rich, evil, greedy, controlling entities that are destroying our country. We should boycott all of them…”, they say – on Facebook or Twitter (corporations) from an Apple or Microsoft (corporations) computer while sipping a Starbucks (corporation) latte.
Then getting in a Subaru (foreign corporation), filling up at Town Pump (corporation), driving down a street (paid for in part by corporate taxes) while listening to EMI (foreign corporation) artist Paul McCartney on a Sony (foreign corporation) mp3 player, on their way to a job at Green Energy Corporation.
Then for lunch picking up some McDonalds (corporation) and checking their DAD (corporation) stock and US Bank (corporation) savings accounts before going home to a house built with Building Materials Corporation of America products and financed by Home Mortgage Corporation, popping a DVD into a Hitachi (foreign corporation) DVD player to watch Kung Fu Panda (DreamWorks Corporation) on an RCA (corporation) flat screen and opening a Westinghouse (corporation) refrigerator for some Ben & Jerry’s (corporation) ice cream.
Then after brushing their teeth (Colgate Palmolive Corporation) and watching a late show on CBS (corporation) they close their eyes and think, “Yeah, I sure hate those useless corporations…” before drifting off to sleep on a Sealy (corporation) mattress.
Editors note: Here is full text of the letter Melania Trump wrote to America the day after her husband, former President Donald Trump, survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Melania Trump July 14, 2024
I am thinking of you, now, my fellow Americans.
We have always been a unique union. America, the fabric of our gentle nation is tattered, but our courage and common sense must ascend and bring us back together as one.
When I watched that violent bullet strike my husband, Donald, I realized my life, and Barron’s life, were on the brink of devastating change. I am grateful to the brave secret service agents and law enforcement officials who risked their own lives to protect my husband.
To the families of the innocent victims who are now suffering from this heinous act, I humbly offer my sincerest sympathy. Your need to summon your inner strength for such a terrible reason saddens me.
A monster who recognized my husband as an inhuman political machine attempted to ring out Donald’s passion – his laughter, ingenuity, love of music, and inspiration. The core facets of my husband’s life – his human side – were buried below the political machine. Donald, the generous and caring man who I have been with through the best of times and the worst of times.
Let us not forget that differing opinions, policy, and political games are inferior to love. Our personal, structural, and life commitment – until death – is at serious risk. Political concepts are simple when compared to us, human beings.
We are all humans, and fundamentally, instinctively, we want to help one another. American politics are only one vehicle that can uplift our communities. Love, compassion, kindness and empathy are necessities.
And let us remember that when the time comes to look beyond the left and the right, beyond the red and the blue, we all come from families with the passion to fight for a better life together, while we are here, in this earthly realm.
Dawn is here again. Let us reunite. Now.
This morning, ascend above the hate, the vitriol, and the simple-minded ideas that ignite violence. We all want a world where respect is paramount, family is first, and love transcends. We can realize this world again. Each of us must demand to get it back. We must insist that respect fills the cornerstone of our relationships again.
I am thinking of you, my fellow Americans.
The winds of change have arrived. For those of you who cry in support, I thank you. I commend those of you who have reached out beyond the political divide – thank you for remembering that every single politician is a man or a woman with a loving family.
In a shocking poll (from left-leaning NBC News, no less), a whopping majority of respondents admitted that things are not going well in Joe Biden’s America.
Like many Italian Americans I recognize Columbus Day as a way to take pride in my Italian heritage.
Unfortunately, once again this year there are those would like to take Montana in the direction of other states like Hawaii, Oregon and South Dakota, in the elimination of Columbus Day.
Those voices, including the usual state legislators and apparently everyone who works for the Great Falls Tribune, seem willfully ignorant of a couple of important facts.
First, Columbus never set one foot in what we now call America.
Secondly, history is replete with examples of indigenous peoples in America conquering and taking neighboring tribes as slaves, stealing their land, brutalizing and raping women, engaging in human sacrifice and torture as well as committing atrocities including acts of cannibalism.
No racial or ethnic group is pure and innocent when it comes to treating fellow human beings badly. Those who constantly single out white Europeans as monsters while ignoring the atrocities committed by other groups and individuals do so mostly for selfish political reasons.
Their hypocrisy is clear to anyone interested in the facts.
So I would ask the local Great Falls finger pointers and virtue signalers, like those at the Great Falls Tribune who make money on the Lewis and Clark advertising brand, how they feel about the fact that Clark himself held slaves and the Corps of Discovery helped open up the West to American expansion and the “exploitation” of indigenous peoples?
Where are the calls to eliminate the statues of Lewis and Clark in and around Great Falls?
Where are the demands to get rid of any mention of Lewis and Clark in our local celebrations or in the naming of local restaurants and other businesses and tourist sites?
Please, be consistent or be quiet.
Philip Faccenda – Proud First Generation Italian American
In Geneva this week, Hunter Biden’s dad grew incredibly angry — at a State TV CNN reporter, incredibly.
Following the summit with Vladimir Putin, CNN’s Kaitlin Collins asked Biden why he was “confident” that Putin would, after meeting with Biden, suddenly change his behavior.
The president lost it, which you can see here (it’s an amusing minute and two seconds):
President Biden snaps at CNN's @kaitlancollins who asks why he's "confident" Putin will change his behavior:
"I'm not confident I'm going to change his behavior. What the hell? What do you do all the time?… If you don't understand that, you're in the wrong business." pic.twitter.com/LSX0QY2AF1
Biden’s short fuse isn’t a secret to anyone who has been paying attention.
Perhaps in the name of equity, Biden has raged not only at a sympathetic media, but also at voters. Even left-wing Politifact admitted that Joe Biden has called voters “fat”, “a damn liar”, “a dog faced pony solider”, and even challenged an 83 year-old Democrat voter to both an IQ contest and a pushup contest.
What’s more amazing: that Biden becomes so easily unhinged at the obsequious corporate press, or that he tears into voters (something that, for all of his faults, Trump never did)?
Either way, we can at least take solace in the fact that Democrats, after years of grousing about “decorum,” now spare us their faux outrage.
There is an accepted definition of racism in Critical Race Theory (“CRT”) that suggests that, by definition, all whites are racist and people of color cannot be racist. Rather than a ‘color blind’ society (the content of one’s character, and all that), racism has been redefined in Marxist terms to create a neat tautology. You see, according to this theory, all people are prejudiced against those who are different, including by race. In order to be defined as “racism” though, this innate prejudice must be combined with institutional power. The theory further defines institutional power as something only whites have, and something all whites have. Therefore, since all whites have institutional power, and since all whites are prejudiced, all whites are, by definition, racist. On the other hand, since ‘people of color’ do not have institutional power, they cannot be racist. (Of course, dividing people into groups of oppressors and oppressed is nothing more than warmed over Marxism–which has always worked out well in the past.)
Neat trick, huh? So now you know what they are talking about when they say “reverse racism isn’t a thing.”
Do you accept this definition? Do you have a right not to accept it? Acceptance doesn’t matter to the new thought police—they have decided you are a racist. They reserve unto themselves the right to define the terms and then smear you with them.
Predictably, this new theory, whereby some define others by the color of their skin, is called anti-racism. (Orwell, anyone?)
It’s probably not a surprise, then, that we are beginning to see pushback from the states, including Iowa, Texas, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho, Rhode Island, Louisiana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, West Virginia, North Carolina and yes, Montana.
Superintendent Elsie Arntzen and Attorney General have recently weighed in on the controversy. Reading the article, you can get glimpses of the truth but, for the most part, the CRT advocates adopt an attitude of “what, we’re just teaching history.” Of course they know where they are heading. It’s not “history,” it’s a theory (Critical Race Theory) that suggests that our entire nation was founded on bondage and evil, that throughout history, the USA was a uniquely evil force of malevolence, and that the only way to balance the scales is to recognize that “whiteness” is evil, and that our entire culture is based on overarching “white supremacy.”
CRT is not about challenging our thoughts with “the facts of history.” It is about casting those “facts of history” into a narrative suggesting that racism is the front, center and rear of history. That nothing else happened in this country beyond what can be seen through the lens of racism. We’re not stupid, folks. We get what you are saying. We are not arguing about “facts,” we are arguing about a theory as to what those facts mean. Might it be correct? Maybe, but there are many competing theories as was made clear after the debunking of the New York Times’ shameful and narrative induced “1619 Project.” (Which, by the way, is now being taught in some schools.)
This quote, from Montana Teacher of the Year, Dylan Huisken, is quite illuminating as you read on: “It will be hard to meet this standard if we can’t be upfront with students on how racism has shaped society and law, especially if broaching such subjects leads to bad faith accusations of indoctrination.”
One advocate for this theory of the USA as built primarily on the oppression of races other than whites, was Howard Zinn who, through the infatuated and widespread adoption of his “People’s History of the USA” by high school history teachers everywhere has gained an outsized voice in discussions of American history. Zinn passed away in 2010, but is still revered as a socialist who was instrumental in the Hate America First movement.
Zinn’s voice lives on in the Zinn Education Project, which is apparently operated by “two non-profit organizations, Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change, that have spent decades developing and providing social justice resources for teachers.” Great. Teachers as social justice activists. Stop me if you’ve heard this before.
But wait, it gets worse. Recognizing that many state legislatures (you know, the people’s branch of government) are moving against the teaching of CRT in public schools, the Zinn Education Project has developed its “Pledge to Teach the Truth.” According to the website:
Lawmakers in at least 15 states are attempting to pass legislation that would require teachers to lie to students about the role of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and oppression throughout U.S. history.
A recent bill introduced in the Missouri legislature exemplifies a rash of similar bills — in Texas, Idaho, Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Arizona, and North Carolina — that aim to prohibit teachers from teaching the truth about this country: It was founded on dispossession of Native Americans, slavery, structural racism and oppression; and structural racism is a defining characteristic of our society today.
Specifically, the Missouri bill bans teaching that: identifies people or groups of people, entities, or institutions in the United States as inherently, immutably, or systemically sexist, racist, anti-LGBT, bigoted, biased, privileged, or oppressed.
But how can one teach honestly about the nature of our society without examining how today’s racial inequality is a systemic legacy of this country’s history?
From police violence, to the prison system, to the wealth gap, to maternal mortality rates, to housing, to education and beyond, the major institutions and systems of our country are deeply infected with anti-Blackness and its intersection with other forms of oppression. To not acknowledge this and help students understand the roots of U.S. racism is to deceive them — not educate them. This history helps students understand the roots of inequality today and gives them the tools to shape a just future. It is not just a history of oppression, but also a history of how people have organized and created coalitions across race, class, and gender.
The Missouri bill names these leading social justice education groups as those whose curricula would be banned: 1619 Project initiative of the New York Times, the Learning for Justice Curriculum of the Southern Poverty Law Center, We Stories, programs of Educational Equity Consultants, BLM at School, Teaching for Change, Zinn Education Project, and any other similar, predecessor, or successor curricula.
The proposed legislation fails to name a single lesson that is inaccurate or that misleads students about U.S. history.
We the undersigned educators will not be bullied. We will continue our commitment to develop critical thinking that supports students to better understand problems in our society, and to develop collective solutions to those problems. We are for truth-telling and uplifting the power of organizing and solidarity that move us toward a more just society.
So far, just short of 2,500 teachers have signed the pledge. I highly encourage you to spend some time reviewing the comments. This is ‘bullet-point history’ at its finest, and most of the comments are dripping with virtue-signaling and self-righteousness. Want to bet how many of these teachers are white? Makes you wonder why they don’t give up their ‘positions of power.’ I did not find any Montana teachers on the list, but Huisken’s comment, above, suggests that similar sentiments to those in the comments can certainly be found in Montana classrooms.
Their self-glorified notions of “the truth” are belied by their own obvious ignorance. These are theoretical discussions. (Critical Race Theory) These Mensa candidates, who are so much smarter than the parents of the children they plan to indoctrinate, and so much smarter than the people who go to work every day to pay their salaries, cannot recognize that what they proclaim as “the truth,” never to be violated, is simply a narrative, or interpretation, of historical events. Their self-delusion is embarrassing. None of this is to say that CRT is or isn’t true, that systemic racism is or isn’t true, or even that white supremacy is or isn’t the truth. But it is not, on the whole, objectively true.
I am actually more concerned, though, with the larger picture. What does it mean when the people who work for the taxpayers feel unconstrained to follow the laws the taxpayers adopt (through their representatives)? When you look at the arrogance of the comments to ‘the pledge,’ about teaching “the truth,” it is not hard to imagine similar arrogance leading to public employees demanding pay and benefits while reserving unto themselves the right to define their own jobs. How long will that last?
Remember Lois Lerner? The IRS official who ‘slow walked’ 501(c)(3) deductions for right leaning groups? She retired on a full-pension. Remember Kevin Klinesmith, the FBI agent who was involved in submitting false FISA applications? He got probation. Now we have teachers who (no doubt) would not hesitate to insist on higher pay and better benefits (or no in-person classes!) pledging to ignore the law and insisting on their ‘right’ to teach “the Truth.”
It’s one more brick in the wall between the so-called elites and those of us who foot the bill.
“Now Congress has certified the results. A new administration will be inaugurated on Jan. 20th. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power. This moment calls for healing and reconciliation.”
I suspect that those who are in favor of doing away with the Electoral College haven’t really thought it through.
Come on, man! If we abolish the Electoral College where will future generations of electricians go to learn how to fix our wiring?
All kidding aside, today state electors in all 50 states and the District of Columbia made the final determination of the 2020 election: Joe Biden is now officially the President-elect.
That doesn’t mean that everyone has to personally like, or even accept, the result.
We all know that there are still some folks who still haven’t accepted the fact that Donald Trump is currently the duly elected POTUS – and President Trump will continue to be President Trump until January 20, 2021.
It also doesn’t mean that there wasn’t election malfeasance and fraud. There was. No doubt.
What the decision by the Electoral College today means is that the Constitutional process for deciding who our nation’s President will be for the next four years (starting January 20, 2021) is now over.
President Trump should begin the transition period and he should do so with grace and respect for our system of governance, even though the ‘other side’ refused to do that when Trump was elected.
The President has an opportunity here to be an example of how to do it right, something the Democrats and the previous administration did not do and have not done.
He fought the good fight and exercised his rights to contest the election results. He lost.
Now it’s time for the President and his supporters to focus on the next chapter, which is going to be monumentally important for the future of our country, from outside the White House and the Office of President.
Trump should use his remaining days in office to do everything he can to continue helping our country move forward.
He should concede the election.
But he should never concede the battle to expose corruption and fight the forces that are trying to “fundamentally change America”. And neither should any of us.
