EVERYTHING THEY TOLD YOU ABOUT COLUMBUS WAS BUNK: Rod Martin points out the crucial importance of two facts in understanding the significance of Columbus to the subsequent development of the New World.

First, the germs bearing the diseases brought to the New World by Columbus and subsequent Europeans, especially the Spanish, wiped out 80-90 percent of the native populations from Canada to Brazil. Much of North, Central and South America was unoccupied or only occasionally occupied.

Second, the Europeans didn’t even know about the existence of those germs bearing those diseases, therefore holding them responsible for “genocide of the Native inhabitants” is a myth used by power-hungry Leftist myth-makers to generate shame based on a whole sequence of derivative myths that are constantly used as a weapon against those feeling the shame.

Martin reprinted this essay that he originally penned in 2015 this weekend to commemorate Columbus Day on October 14. The facts Martin marshals are even more relevant today than they were in 2015.