David Frum

David Frum @davidfrum

@YAppelbaum As I observe this and similar rotations, the same thought always entertains me: you can bet your bottom peseta that many of the most passionately held progressive views of today will seem as ludicrous and wrong in 100 years time as those of 100 years ago seem to many today. END — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

@YAppelbaum Now here we are in 2021, revolving back to an updated version of the anti-Columbus views of pre-republican America. 15/x — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

@YAppelbaum But Columbus did set in motion the creation of a Castilian empire on the American mainland. The founders of New England and Virginia held *very* negative views of that Castilian empire - and thus of Columbus. 14/x — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

@YAppelbaum By the time the Castilians figured out what had happened in 1492, the Portuguese had already reached India, smashed the Venetian spice monopoly, and founded a trading empire of their own. (Columbus himself of course never accepted that he had not reached India.) 13/x — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

@YAppelbaum And there was no reasoning with Columbus! He was dogmatic, overbearing, refused to listen to more expert navigators. If he hadn't bumped into the Caribbean islands first, his crews would have died of thirst less than halfway to their destination. 12/x — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

@YAppelbaum Of course the Portuguese who rejected Columbus knew the earth was round! They also knew that their 1,000 ton carracks could not carry enough food or water to travel westward without stopping until they reached the Indies. Columbus' plan was founded on bad math. 11/x — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

@YAppelbaum Even now, centuries later, you still meet people who believe Washington Irving's invention- including eg the local guide who showed me the tomb of Columbus that now rests in the cathedral in Seville. 10/x — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

@YAppelbaum Irving never fretted over-much about such things as "facts" and "accuracy." It was Irving for example who invented the outrageous lie that Columbus met resistance only because his contemporaries thought the world was flat. 9/x — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

@YAppelbaum But the man who most indelibly inscribed Columbus on the American mental map was Washington Irving, in his "biography" (if that's the write word) published in 1828 after a sojourn in Spain. 8/x — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

@YAppelbaum Barlow's 1807 opening lines: https://t.co/AAjBGgygun — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

@YAppelbaum Columbus began to rise in estimation only in the early republic. King's College NY was renamed for him after the revolution. So was the District of the new US capital. In early 1800s, Joel Barlow aspired to write an American Aeneid based on Columbus. https://t.co/HmtjaeRD0J 6/x — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

@YAppelbaum Columbus began to rise in estimation only in the early republic. King's College NY was renamed for him after the revolution. So was the District of the new US capital. In early 1800s, Joel Barlow aspired to write an American Aeneid based on Columbus. https://t.co/HmtjaeRD0J — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

@YAppelbaum No Columbus, Virginia, either - and when Richmond Italian-Americans proposed to raise a statue to Columbus in the 1920s, it was refused a place on Monument Avenue and relegated to a distant park instead. 5/x — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

@YAppelbaum In some ways, this is a reversion to the mean. Columbus was not a big hero in early America either: too Spanish, too Catholic. There's no town named for him in Massachusetts eg. 4/x — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

@YAppelbaum Columbus has been rather downgraded in 21st century America from the high esteem he held in the late 19th https://t.co/vLM7ngbV9H and early to middle 20th centuries https://t.co/MHDYyJmhuI 3/x — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

@YAppelbaum Now some follow-up thoughts of my own, posted for Americans from a Spanish time zone (rather appropriate for the day, actually) ... 2/x — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

Do reread @YAppelbaum on Columbus Day https://t.co/NJaLBYeuTK "After an 1891 lynching of Italians in New Orleans ... Italians quickly adopted Columbus as a shield against the ethnic, racial, and religious discrimination they faced in their adoptive country." 1/x — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

My wife compares the square to an opera stage set: one exit stage right, one stage left, a fountain at stage center, and amazing acoustics from the reverberating stones. — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

Same square tonight: a busking guitarist interrupted his performance to teach two little boys how to strum some chords; two intensely nervous gay teens strolled in, paused at the fountain, grasped hands, strolled out. 3/3 — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

RT @Reuters: Italy hits target of fully vaccinating 80% of people over-12s https://t.co/nT91Is7otL https://t.co/F3Y5na9iv2 — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

Few have done more harm, and had he realized all his plans, he would have done even worse. — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

RT @bsarwary: As well as the son of former Afghan defense minister, he was a US also a US military contractor, his company was even paying… — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

RT @RonFilipkowski: MAGA Texas Gov candidate Allen West did not get vaccinated. He did take ivermectin. Allen West is being admitted to the… — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

Over the 90 minutes or so that we sat there, young couples strolled into and out of the square, perching on the rim of the fountain in the center for make-out sessions. One couple passionately kissed for almost half an hour, blind to all the rest of the world. Life is strong. 2/2 — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

My wife and I had a late dinner tonight on a Barcelona square, site of a grim atrocity of the Spanish Civil War: a Francoist bombing of a church and orphanage. 1/2 https://t.co/DLuWCdSZjP — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

RT @matisaksk: Czech elections: PM Andrej #Babis looks set to lose power https://t.co/3GBw79rDmh #Czechia #politics — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

RT @Reuters: Singapore opens quarantine-free travel to major countries, eyes COVID-19 'new normal' https://t.co/wM23iaKyaH https://t.co/sQM… — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

The way to end restrictions is to get everybody vaxxed — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

@ezraklein @davidshor I know this is a crazy, out-there idea but ... if the Democratic message on immigration is so repellent, maybe the right answer is not, "Don't talk about it," but instead: "Rethink it." — PolitiTweet.org

David Frum @davidfrum

Just catching up to this fascinating @ezraklein on @davidshor - and I was especially struck by this https://t.co/nLoXGY89dc https://t.co/uQaWqXdVVG — PolitiTweet.org