Student: You're looking at certain documents
that have historical value from
Bartolome de las Casas and others,
but I think that it's not factually accurate
to say that some counterpoints
aren't also bound in actual history.
Knowles: What did I say that wasn't factually accurate?
Student: People can have different opinions
about Columbus, and they're being recorded
as historical facts...
Knowles: Some people can have correct opinions,
and some can have incorrect opinions.
There are people today who have an incorrect opinion
that he was some genocidal, bigoted maniac,
which is clearly, patently refuted by the historical record.
That's not a matter of preference
or some subjective feeling. That's objective fact.
It's an opinion, but it's a true opinion.
Student: My last thing I'll say to that is
there are primary sources on both sides
that will say that Columbus is good or bad,
and to say that only the side that disagrees with you
is politically motivated,
I don't think is correct.
Knowles: What sources are you specifically talking about?
Student: The ones that, not specifically, you're discounting...
I don't have one on the top of my mind, but...
Knowles: Exactly, and this is the problem.
In the absence of facts...
I don't mean to pick on you.
I mean to pick on "them" broadly.
Student: It's okay. I didn't come with one specifically in mind.
If you give me a half hour,
I could probably go find one.
Knowles: You certainly think that you could.
In the absence of historical knowledge,
people have replaced what was once historical knowledge
with broad narratives based on ideology,
based on the headlines of Vox.com articles.
They say, "Surely, there are primary sources
on both sides of the question of Columbus' character.
Surely there must be some legitimate
primary source document that buttresses
my totally random and arbitrary opinion
that he is a genocidal, anti-Indian maniac."
The problem is there isn't.
There is one document that is the one document
that any of them assert as evidence
that Columbus was some genocidal maniac,
and the document was written by his chief political rival.
You can point to that and say
that that has some merit.
I'm not saying it's totally valueless
just because he was a political rival,
but the vast preponderance of evidence
not only provides a different perspective
but utterly contradicts the narrative
that the Left is pushing about Christopher Columbus
because it is anti-historical.
I think the fear here is the broad narratives.
It is to say, "Maybe that particular fact
is inaccurate, but it speaks to a larger truth.
Maybe Jussie Smollet wasn't really attacked
in the streets of Chicago by two white men
who turned out to be gigantic Nigerian men
that he was friends with, but..."
[Audience laughs]
"...it speaks to a larger truth."
But it doesn't.
You cannot be, to quote Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
"morally correct but factually incorrect."
You have to be factually correct to be morally correct.
Feel free to email me or tweet at me
with all of the abundant primary materials
that you feel refute the vast preponderance
of historical knowledge about Columbus,
and I'll consider changing my opinion,
but I won't change my opinion
It must be nice to sit in the freest,
most prosperous, most charitable country
in the history of the world
and, from a position of totally unmerited luxury,
slander the man who made it all possible
without even having the decency
Cowards, ingrates, and moral narcissists throw tarp
over the memory of the man
without whom they would not exist.
Those who call him a murderer and a tyrant
and whatever other nonsense they belch
should consider some other words of Columbus,
which he addressed to the Spanish sovereigns
in his "Lettera Rarissima."
He wrote, "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."
For those of you who didn't catch that last part,
he's telling his preening detractors to go to hell,
and so am I. Thank you very much.
[Audience applauding]