In Response to the Outrage of Me Saying that Christopher Columbus Doesn't Rise to the Heights of Hitler

a) I admitted that there were atrocities. I just posited that atrocities and genocide aren't necessarily equivalent.............b) The Magna Carta obviously applied only to white Europeans. I mean, how in the hell else can you justify the fact that the English continued to subjugate the people of Africa (introducing the concept of slavery to North America where it continued for another TWO HUNDRED years), North America (the English murdered and enslaved just as many Native-Americans as the Spaniards and far more than Christopher Columbus), and Asia (India and what eventually became Pakistan).............c) No, none of us have ever raped and pillaged. But if we were alive, and had been with Columbus in 1492, we most assuredly would have. People, folks, are largely the by-product of their time period, culture, and environment. To think that one enlightened soul, in what was obviously an episode of anomie (the concept borrowed from German sociologist, Emile Durkheim) would have ever had the insights and the wherewithal to stand up and utter, "Stop!", is highly improbable.............d) Virtually EVERY slaveholder in the American South had raped their female slaves at one point or another (why do you think that African-Americans are lighter in skin color than African-Africans?). If Christopher Columbus was a Hitler for this particular transgression, then virtually every single slave-holder in the old South has to be considered one, too.............e) Similarly, if Christopher Columbus is considered a Hitler, then Montezuma has to be considered one, too. This, in that, yes, the Aztecs engaged in a far more systematic mass-murder than Columbus and his legions ever did.............f) ONCE AGAIN, the construct of childhood is largely a modern phenomenon. This, in that wasn't until two hundred or so years ago that children weren't considered little more than tiny adults...whose value amounted to little more than what they could contribute economically to the family. The fact that Columbus's men raped 9 year-olds at that time wasn't any more heinous (and, yes, as a 21st Century person, I agree heartily, it was heinous) than them raping 19 year-olds.............g) Far more African-Americans were murdered (many of them thrown overboard on the way to America) and/or worked to death during Thomas Jefferson's time in the Virginia House of Burgesses, his time as Governor, and later during his tenure as President than Native-Americans ever were during Columbus's stint in the Caribbean. Add to that the fact that 1) Jefferson was a far more enlightened individual than Christopher Columbus (a man with really no formal education) was and 2) he never even once ATTEMPTED to get rid of slavery and, I don't know, six of one half, dozen of another?............h) I have never once asserted that Christopher Columbus was Gandhi or Mother Teresa (though I hear that a lot of liberals don't exactly like her now, either). He obviously was not. I have only tried to supply some perspective and context to the analysis - you know, the thing that scholarly historians are supposed to do.............i) If the behavior of Columbus and his crew were considered barbaric, even for that time, why was there not more of a significant condemnation of it? Surely the severity of the exploits had to have been known eventually. The way that I see it, folks, if anybody here was a Hitler, it had to have been Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. This in that they're the ones who bankrolled the whole operation and condoned the slavery.............j) Jorge Estevez is the director of the National Museum of the Native-American in Manhattan. The man himself is of Taino descent. According to Mr. Estevez, the widely spread accounts that the followers of Columbus wiped out the Taino people are inaccurate. Yes, many Taino did die. But many others intermingled with the Spanish and others who went into slavery weren't counted due to tax evasion. He cites specifically a 1514 census which showed that over 40% of the Spaniards had taken at least one Taino wife and, unless these were strictly platonic relationships, there had to have been numerous offspring. Add to this some recent findings from a study in Puerto Rico. These researchers have put forth evidence that over 60% of present-day Puerto Ricans have at least some Amerindian mitochondrial DNA (a higher % than those which possess European or African DNA). It appears, folks, that the demise of the Taino Indian isn't as rigidly absolute as previously thought.