PrintOctober 8, 2007
Happy Government Employees' Day!
Greetings from the People's Republic of Berkeley, where Columbus Day is known as "Indigenous People's Day." I have learned to get over my annoyance at the disrespecting of Columbus and implicit single digit salute to the America we really live in, a place built upon the European culture Columbus brought to the New World.
I think it is clever of the City of Berkeley to find a way of not honoring Columbus while retaining a day off for city workers. Believe me, if anyone had proposed simply taking Columbus Day off the calendar of paid holidays, we would have seen how shallow the tangible commitment to multicultural orthodoxy. Renaming the day and keeping the holiday amounts to simply another example cheap moral exhibitionism.
I am deeply grateful for the arrival of Columbus on a personal level. Few individuals have so radically changed the history of the world. But I am quite frankly perturbed that Columbus Day has become one of those holidays that government workers get at the expense of everyone else who has to work to pay taxes. I think of government workers as a literal overclass, with privileges that most other Americans do not enjoy. Along with gold plated health care and retirement benefits, job security, and getting paid for jury duty, they get more holidays than most taxpayers.
So I think of Indigenous People's Day as a very special holiday, one created to benefit government employees -- keeping their holiday, while making a political gesture. It is really Government Employees' Day, no matter what you call it.
Thomas Lifson is editor and publisher of American Thinker.
