Monday is Columbus Day — in grade school the holiday we spent making construction paper American flags, acting in usually naive explorers-encounter-Native American vignettes and hearing a 30-minute review of the European “discovery” of the New World.

The second Monday in October, and moreover the legends of daring explorers scouting the Brave New World, is traditionally venerated in the schoolroom and in the public forum, a patriotic celebration of the human spirit and the quest to push outward the bounds of knowledge. Indeed, Christopher Columbus has become the namesake of no fewer than 10 American cities, a university and the United States’ capital district.
But in recent years, critics have lambasted the holiday, claiming that Columbus Day is at best a misguided, undeserved commemoration of a greed-driven quest for power to an implicit affirmation of past genocide on the part of the modern American consciousness.
Conversely, Columbus’ most ardent modern supporters invoke historical inevitability or cultural Darwinism as a justification for what modern historians recognize as a gross, discriminatory quashing of human rights. After all, they might argue, a collision between the Old and New worlds was, in the long run, a certain eventuality, and moreover, that Columbus didn’t have the privilege of knowing the modern construction of human rights.
Both of these extremes are, of course, absurd. And, as usual, the truth is somewhere in between. But herein lies a lesson about criticism of America in the modern world.
Most sociopolitical extremists fall into one of two categories: The most fanatical social Darwinists tend to approach the history as a series of conflicts in which the superior — that is, the most fit — culture or idea rightfully tends to win. Operating under the Panglossian assumption that ours is therefore the best of all possible worlds, they tend to view even obvious abuse as part of history’s natural flow, even if that abuse
is regrettable.
At the opposite end of the spectrum are usually paranoid, counterculture radicals like overzealous Marxists. At worst, they see soul-crushing exploitation in every power structure everywhere and often rabidly protest accordingly.
Philosophical fallacy plagues both of these stances, but I’m going to spend most of the rest of this column addressing the latter. In the few years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, America’s critics have protested more and more loudly. Indeed, informed and rational dissent is the very basis for American patriotism, per Thomas Jefferson.
Many of America’s domestic critics, however, are regrettably uninformed, irrational or both.
Often, they will appeal to America’s history what they see as the nation’s unequivocal, unrelenting evil. Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the establishment of Japanese internment camps in World War II, slavery and at least several other human rights violations all mar the nation’s human rights record.
Being human, we have inherited the legacy of our predecessors’ successes, and we are heirs to their mistakes. Fortunately, though, the individuality of human thought spares us from culpability for them. Thus, to assign a blanket of blame to some or all Americans for past transgressions — regardless of whether they have indirectly benefited from them — is morally and philosophically bankrupt.
Furthermore, the irrational among America’s critics often claim that America represents a grandiose, culture-crunching evil. Certainly, even the nation’s recent history includes civil and human rights violations. However, America’s record of human rights is among the cleanest of history’s world powers. Also, the nation, particularly as it stands now, is more accurately characterized by traditions of free speech, free press — as criticism of the government in this publication and others demonstrates — and a usually open political process.
American law, culture and politics clearly have much room for improvement: You’ll certainly see criticisms of some of those shortcomings later in this space. But citing policy faults or civil rights violations as a basis for characterizing the modern American zeitgeist as wholly or inherently evil is intellectually dishonest, genuinely unpatriotic and represents a lack of gratefulness for living in a nation where the above freedoms are enjoyed. Not all societies are equally good: Freedom is better than slavery, free speech is better than censorship, open debate is better than political imprisonment.
True patriotism lies neither in blind defense of the nation’s political machinations and mistakes nor in rabidly attacking your country — which embodies as law or tradition the importance of human and civil rights — as immoral.
I can think of no better way to celebrate the second Monday of October than by reflecting on the importance of rationality and the many blessings of living in free society.