Near the end of Mel Gibson’s film “Apocalypto,” we see Christian missionaries arriving in the New World to save the natives from a culture of death that celebrates beheadings and human sacrifices to pagan Gods. Gibson has said he based the dramatic landing scene on the fourth expedition of the great Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. But celebrating the spread of Christianity has become so politically incorrect that a New Age adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has called for repealing Columbus Day.

Marianne Williamson, a prominent supporter of Sanders and his “political revolution,” writes in her book, The Healing of America, that Columbus was “a murderer of indigenous peoples,” and says his life “was a model for the standard of enslavement and killings that came to characterize much of European settlement in the New World…”

She insists that Columbus Day, which was declared a federal holiday in 1937 by President Franklin Roosevelt, must be repealed.

“When it comes to celebrating Columbus or Columbus Day we should just say no,” she writes. She proposes that Columbus Day be replaced by “Immigrants’ Day.”

Williamson, founder of The Peace Alliance and the campaign to establish a U.S. Department of Peace, has been doing much in the political realm other than promoting Sanders and writing about his “revolutionary” vision on the Sanders campaign website. She is sponsoring a conference in Washington, D.C. this month featuring such luminaries as Phil Donahue and promoting “personal peace” and the teaching of “peace in schools.”

In this context, a former teacher who is the curriculum editor of a group called Rethinking Schools and the co-director of the Zinn Education Project has proposed the abolition of Columbus Day and creation of what amounts to an “Indigenous Peoples Lives Matter” movement. The name “Zinn” refers to Howard Zinn, the Communist Party member who rewrote American history in favor of a “people’s struggle” against evil elites.

While Sanders has embraced Williamson, even speaking at one of her “Sister Giant” feminist conferences, it’s not clear if Sanders favors the tearing down of the Columbus Memorial Fountain, which is located at Union Station in Washington, D.C., just a few blocks from Sanders’ Senate office.

What’s more, there are images of Columbus throughout the U.S. Capitol complex. One shows Columbus examining a globe and chart, using an octant, mercury barometer, and magnetic compass to plan his voyages.

The attack on America’s history as a nation of European immigrants is not new, although the involvement of New Agers and Bernie Sanders supporters like Williamson in this assault doesn’t get any attention in the press. Sanders is usually portrayed as a nice man who believes in a “democratic” version of socialism, unlike the Soviet approach.

However, many Americans are tired of the trashing of their nation’s European roots and are now pushing back against the attempt to smear the reputations of those like Columbus who brought Christian civilization to natives who practiced savagery and barbarism.

An interesting historical fact is that the Columbus voyages were designed to counter the influence of global Islam. “By sailing west, Columbus was aiming to outflank Islam, gaining access to the riches of the East so as to finance the retaking of Jerusalem,” writes Ben Broussard. “Since the fall of Constantinople in 1453 [to Muslim armies], while Columbus was still a child, calls had come from all corners of Europe to renew the Crusade. Columbus saw himself as the instrument to fulfill the longed-for end.”

While the politically correct major media avoid the truth about the reasons for the voyages and what motivated the discovery of the New World, bloggers are stepping forward to answer the question, “Why was Columbus looking for a trade route to the East?” The Citizen Warrior blog notes that “during its second great jihad, Islam had invaded Central Asia and defeated Constantinople in 1453, cutting off the overland route for Europeans. Islamic armies continued their jihad northward, and conquered much of what is now Eastern Europe, until they were finally stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683 (on September 11th).”

In his book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades), Robert Spencer confirms this, noting that the march of Islam had closed the existing trade routes to the East and that Columbus was trying to “bypass the Muslims” and make it possible for Europeans to reach India by sea.

The Order Sons of Italy in America (OSIA), an organization of men and women of Italian heritage in the United States, has vigorously defended Columbus in a report entitled “Columbus: Fact Vs. Fiction.” However, the report notes that since 1992 “special interest groups” have “used this 15th century Renaissance navigator to further their 21st century political and social agendas.”

Of course, we know these “special interest groups” are the anti-American and Marxist-oriented organizations whose agendas include denigrating America’s Founding Fathers as white racists who oppressed the natives.

There was a time when Democrats and Republicans honored Columbus and didn’t bow to political correctness. In a statement on Columbus Day issued in 1940, President Roosevelt declared, “The courage and the faith and the vision of the Genoese navigator glorify and enrich the drama of the early movement of European people to America. Columbus and his fellow voyagers were the harbingers of later mighty movements of people from Spain, from Columbus’s native Italy and from every country in Europe. And out of the fusion of all these national strains was created the America to which the Old World contributed so magnificently.”

The OSIA report notes that while left-wing activists portray the New World at the time of the arrival of Columbus as an earthly paradise, the natives “practiced cannibalism, ritual human sacrifice and slavery and suffered from syphilis, hepatitis, addictive cocaine use and cancer, caused by smoking.”

The Gibson film “Apocalypto” depicts the human sacrifices in dramatic and graphic scenes, as human hearts are literally cut out of victims and offered up to their sun god. A Mayan priest then chops off a victim’s head, holding it high and then rolling it down a stairway.

In a review, Dr. Peter Hammond, Director of Frontline Fellowship, writes, “By the time the Christians arrive, we have a far greater understanding of what life was like in Central America before the blessings of European civilization brought an end to the incessant genocidal tribal warfare, rampant slavery and human sacrifices of idolatrous paganism.”

The bloody pre-Christian paganism that preceded the arrival of the Christian missionaries is what is now being sold as a Garden of Eden that America should be celebrating instead of Columbus.

With abortions being performed in the U.S. at the rate of over 3,000 per day, and baby parts being harvested for profit, as documented by the Center for Medical Progress, one can only conclude America is already well on its way back to barbarism.

But Marianne Williamson, who ran for Congress on a “pro-choice” platform, thinks honoring Columbus gives America a bad name. That Bernie Sanders embraces her and gladly accepts her advice says a lot about the nature of the Sanders socialist “revolution.” Williamson calls it a “Revolution of Love” against a “sociopathic economy” that requires meditation. “Ignite the change,” she concludes.

Who will defend Christian civilization and Columbus against this New Age socialist gibberish?