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September 18, 2004
American Holocaust
Filed under: Rant
I just finished reading American Holocaust by David E. Stannard. If you haven't read it, I encourage you to do so. It is a detailed and horrendously fascinating look into the days of Columbus and his Spanish conquest of the Americas. Stannard does a brilliant job of story-telling using journal entries from early Conquistadors, historical and archeological research, and a host of other information sources that all weave together in this 358-page quick read. Be warned: the details are gruesome and the inferred imagery made me do the proverbial "turning of the head" more times than I can count.
Never have I been so helplessly frustrated with humans.
While I sincerely appreciate Stannard's book, I absolutely and categorically disagree with his premise and assumptions for writing it. In the Prologue, referring to worldwide genocidal accounts, Stannard's intent is brief, "The murder and destruction continue, with the aid and assistance of the United States." Later he will say,
"Before Christ would return, all Christians knew, the gospel had to be spread throughout the entire world, and the entire world was not yet known. Spreading the gospel throughout the world meant acceptance of its message by all the world's people, once they had been located - and that in turn mean the total conversion or extermination of all non-Christians."
I could blog about this for quite sometime but it would work better for both of us if you just read the book.
Surprisingly, Stannard includes a quote half way into the book that does a much better job at encouraging change. While the context of it is not a premise for the book, it should have been.
"Rather, as Michael Berenbaum has wisely put it, 'we should let our sufferings, however incommensurate, unite us in condemnation of inhumanity rather than divide us in a calculus of calamity."
Thanks, Stannard, for educating me and completely changing my paradigms about Christopher Columbus and other significant "leaders" since then.
As for your conclusions and assumptions about America and Christianity being the cause of every past, present, and future genocidal evil, I beg to differ. Maybe a future blog?
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