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VOICE-of-REASON wrote
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And what ‘Objectivist goals’ did Columbus and his crew set back? You ARE aware of the fact that [the author of Objectivism was born only in 1905, and the full formulation of the philosophy of Objectivism was itself only finished in the late 1950’s]…right? So what ‘Objectivist goals’—supposing there are any—did Columbus—the individual—hinder?
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Sorry, perhaps it's not entirely Columbus's fault. But he represents a strain of thought in western civilisation that is much more antithetical to Objectivism then most of the Indian philosophies he and later explorers replaced.
He was also a slave-owner, and helped enslave at least 2,000 people, some of whom he raped, and he invented the encomieda system, which essentially became a sort of feudalistic form of slavery. Here's an example from Wikipedia: "On Columbus' 2nd voyage he began to require tribute from the TaÃ*no in Hispanola. Each adult over 14 years of age, was expected to deliver a certain quantity of gold. In the earlier days of the conquest, if this tribute was not observed, the Taino were either mutilated or executed."
So, he was a good navigator, but he was also kind of a douche, and it's not clear to me how he or his civilisation were superior to the Indians on a non-technological level.
And besides, it's Berliner himself who equates attacks on Columbus to attacks on western civilisation; Although Cortes and his ilk weren't exactly Columbus' fault, George Washington and our founding fathers aren't really his triumphs, either.
And if we're looking at western civilisation in Columbus' time, it's easy to argue that American civilisation at the time was much more advanced philosophically, esspecially if you are looking through an objectivist lense. Now, I don't know how much the discovery of the New World helped with the rise of democratic-capitalist-secularist thought, but it's not hard for me to imagine that if Columbus hadn't found America, and it had instead been discovered a couple hundred years later, when western civilisation was more advanced, that everybody would have been better off.
Let me clumsily segue to my conclusion:
Mr. Berliner feels that "Some cultures are better than others: a free society is better than slavery; reason is better than brute force as a way to deal with other men; productivity is better than stagnation."
I agree that these are good standards on which to judge a society. The question then becomes this: Did western civilisation in the early 16th century, as embodied by Columbus, embody these traits to a degree that they stood out from contemporary societies?
The answer, as I have endevoured to show, is no. A similar question can be asked of the American societies of the time: Did American societies embody these traits to a noticably lesser degree then contemporary western civilisations? Again, the answer is no, they did not.
Thus, I conclude that Mr. Berliner is an idiot.