"Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation—or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind’s wings should have grown."

Ayn Rand — Speech to the United States Military Academy at West Point on March 6th 1974.

That was the first thought I had upon closing the book to Gavin Menzies masterpiece, 1421: The Year China Discovered the World or more specifically, discovered America. I had put the Menzies book on my “to read” list a long time ago, and recently found a window to give it the kind of attention I wanted.

I have seen countless examples of modern academia standing in the way of science and the Menzies case is no different. Academic arguments are not built upon logic, reason, or even a strict adherence to scientific validation. Menzies has provided in his books the exact locations of several ship wrecks that are most likely the junks from Zheng He’s fleet, yet governments operate the waters of these wrecks, and governments work with academics to hold together the acceptable parameters of human thought. There is no desire to dive those wrecks by established science and governments to prove Menzies correct even though the evidence is right under the water and is known to all. Rather, governments and academics would rather drag their feet so to maintain plausible deniability of any truth that is contrary to their continued belief that it was the Europeans who settled North America not ships from half a world away. Menzies developed a rare ability in all his years traveling the world’s oceans and putting into exotic ports even in the most remote portions of the globe–he developed wings for his mind where imagination meets reason to logically conjecture the evidence which has been destroyed to hide truths from a public who are to look to academics and politicians with the grace of royalty. Those wings which the average academic lacks, takes Menzies to places where most historians can’t even dream to go, and upon reading 1421: The Year China Discovered the World the reader of that fine book has no choice but to grow wings of their own and follow on a journey that is epic in scope, and history altering in its implication. It is a book of writing that is the best of the best in every category for which the written word was ever intended to paint a picture with imagination that will change the way those with wings upon their own minds see the world forever. It is an epically brilliant book that is now one of my all-time favorites.