Monthly Archives: October 2025

Cole Simmons (The American Mind): Why Columbus Matters

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I agree with the thesis of this article, if not all that is contained therein. For an excellent refutation of the lies about Columbus foisted on us by the enemies of our great nation, I wholeheartedly recommend the book, Not Stolen: The Truth About European Colonialism in the New World, by Jeff Flynn-Paul. Read it and learn the balanced truth. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand. Happy Columbus Day!

We celebrate the civilization he carried into the New World.

Today, we commemorate Christopher Columbus, the man whose daring voyage across the Atlantic in 1492 initiated the Age of Discovery that reshaped the world. Columbus’s prediction that a western route to Asia was possible was not correct in its specifics, but he did not have to be correct to change the world. His legacy is about the spirit that drove him: a spirit of exploration, courage, and leadership.

Columbus’s journey across the Atlantic was no small feat. In an era when ships were fragile and navigation rudimentary, Columbus and his crew faced uncharted waters and unpredictable storms. The dangers were not merely physical; the psychological toll of sailing in the open sea, with no guarantee of land appearing on the horizon, tested the limits of human endurance. Columbus’s men urged him to turn back, but he pressed on, navigating not only the seas but also the fragile morale of his crew.

What does it mean to celebrate such a man? As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, we raise monuments to men as well as the spirit that moved them:

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

This spirit continues to inspire. We honor Columbus not just for what he achieved, but for the qualities that made his achievements possible.

Americans have been celebrating Columbus for a long time. The first monument to Columbus in America, the “Columbus Obelisk” in Baltimore, was erected in 1792. Baltimore Heritage reports that its great age led to it being forgotten at times. “In the 1880s, a local historian felt compelled to debunk a popular rumor that the obelisk memorialized a horse named ‘Columbus’ instead of the man.” That kind of sleepy forgetfulness, however, is impossible in today’s polarized environment.

In 2017, left-wing activists began vandalizing the obelisk. They took a sledgehammer to its base and posted a sign that read “Racism. Tear it Down.” Three years later, in 2020, Baltimore Democrats tried to rename it “The Police Violence Victims Monument,” but the mayor vetoed the city council.

Like the Columbus obelisk, Columbus Day has become a symbol of America that some wish to tear down…

…Actual human beings are far too impressive for leftist ideology, however. Imagine what it would be like for one of these complainers to meet a true 1600s Iroquois brave or Algonquin shaman.

Scholars can debate the justice of this or that event. They can examine the motivations, the pressures, what exactly happened, who did what and when, the impact and outcome, and a thousand other questions that someone genuinely interested in justice would ask. But they should consider the overarching question of our time: Is civilization a good thing? If it is, Columbus can and should be celebrated. If it is bad, he and other explorers must be maligned as destroyers of indigenous peoples.

The activists and intellectuals who hate Columbus hate the spirit of exploration and the civilization that birthed it. The people attacking him are attacking the history of the world as it is, on behalf of a history of the world that never was and never could have been.

For those of us who celebrate Columbus Day, the holiday has likewise become more important than it used to be.

Read it all.

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Kristen Ziccarelli and Joshua Treviño (The American Mind): The Spirit of Columbus Lives On: A Holiday for All Americans

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Agree. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand. The evil of woke must not prevail. Happy Columbus Day!!

Columbus Day ought to provoke reflection as much as celebration—and not just because the White House is emphatically committed to the latter. It was the right move, of course, for the administration to confidently reject acts of erasure like “Indigenous Peoples Day,” and the whole apparatus of academia, media, and elite-left cultural bludgeoning behind it. We should understand what exactly was meant to be erased.

Although Columbus Day in its historical roots is a de facto holiday for Italian Americans, that group was never really the target of those attacking Christopher Columbus or the holiday in his name. Rather, the opposition to Columbus and his day came due to enmity toward the values and roots of those Italian Americans—and every other American worth the name.

Columbus’s Journal of the First Voyage opens with “In nomine Domini nostri Jesu Christi (In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ),” revealing that his journey was an act of faith. He navigated the dangerous waters of the Atlantic to bring about the evangelization of the world foretold in sacred Scripture.

Columbus brought that faith, Catholic and Christian, to the Americas, and so the enemies of the faith became enemies of his. A man of Italy, he sailed for Their Catholic Majesties of Spain, and so the enemies of the Spanish inheritance became enemies of his. Columbus brought a European civilization that came to dominate and define the life of the New World. Columbus brought the ideas of that civilization to the Western Hemisphere, and laid the groundwork for those that transcended them—natural rights, republican law, and every moral advance from Bartolomeo de las Casas to Frederick Douglass.

It is the same tale over and over again: scratch an opponent of Columbus and Columbus Day and you inevitably discover a deep hostility toward the very culture and principles that underpin liberty and decency everywhere. After all, once it is conceded that a seafaring adventurer braving the vast ocean in the name of Christian majesties discovered a land where a “new birth of freedom” eventually flourished—still the fulcrum of mankind’s earthly hopes more than half a millennium later—what is left? That concession means that faith is an intrinsic good—and that adventure in its name is a surpassing virtue.

Men and women who admire Christopher Columbus might dare to be free—and that’s what his enemies truly fear.

Of course there is reason to criticize the historical figure of Columbus, as there is reason to criticize any man who ever lived save one. Christopher Columbus was sometimes iniquitous and at times cruel. This is indisputable—and also irrelevant to the reasons for his celebration. The magnitude of his achievement and its world-historical consequences—dwarfing those of all but a handful of other men in human history—render his faults almost meaningless. The God whom Columbus imperfectly served makes use of imperfect instruments to accomplish His perfect will. We who live in the world Columbus found have only one proper and virtuous response to him: gratitude.

Read it all.

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David Roseberry (The Anglican Substack): Murder in the Cathedral: The Last Gasp of a Church Trying to Be the World—A Church Killing Its Own Soul

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An excellent piece from Father Roseberry with which I totally agree. What is happening in the Church of England is what has happened in the Episcopal Church and other mainline Protestant Churches in the West. It is both maddening and heartbreaking to watch. Lord, have mercy on your Church. Spare her from unbelief and false teachers. May none who legitimately bear your name ever be ashamed of the gospel (Romans 1.16). Raise up for us faithful leaders, especially bishops, who are bold in the Faith and able to teach it to those whom you call.

For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

It’s been a rough week for the Church of England.

First came the announcement of a new Archbishop of Canterbury—a decision that breaks with two thousand years of Christian tradition. Then came the photos from Canterbury Cathedral itself: graffiti splashed across the pillars and walls of that great and ancient cathedral.

Note: Canterbury isn’t just another cathedral. It’s where the story began. It is the cradle of English Christianity. The seat of the Gospel on British soil since 597, when Augustine came from Rome to preach Christ to the Anglo-Saxons. 1From that moment on, Canterbury became the spiritual heart of a nation. Kings were crowned there. Martyrs bled there. Pilgrims walked for days to pray there.

Every Anglican church in the world can trace its roots back to that mission. That’s what makes this so serious. When Canterbury loses her sense of the sacred, something profound—and ancient—is being lost with her.

Put these headlines together, and you see an embarrassing and tragic problem. The Church isn’t being murdered by outsiders. She’s doing herself in. This is not vandalism or persecution. It’s suicide.

Every time we trade holiness for popularity, or beauty for relevance, a little more of the Church’s purpose falls from view. The Church will never die, but a congregation can. A denomination will. And the Church of England had better wake up and realize that antics such as these are not just silly—they are harmful to its mission.

The Church is harming itself—self-vandalizing. That’s the real murder in the cathedral.

The Cathedral as Billboard

The Dean calls it art—an installation called Hear Us. Vinyl graffiti stickers, plastered on medieval stone, meant to look like spray paint from a subway tunnel. Supposedly, it’s meant to make people “think.”

I’ve seen the photos. Some graffiti artists are true to their art form—bold, illegal, shocking by what it says and where it says it. But the shock value here is only in where it’s plastered.

And when was the last time you saw graffiti that had been carefully sourced? Typed in a font made to look like graffiti—the “real thing”—then scanned at the nearest FastSigns in Canterbury and neatly applied on the pillars and staircases. Stick and peel.

One observer put it plainly:

“You don’t take a sacred site like Canterbury Cathedral—one of the oldest and most culturally significant buildings in England—and turn it into a billboard for a temporary art project. This isn’t engaging with the community. It’s a blatant disregard for the sanctity of a space that should be treated with the utmost reverence.”

And that’s exactly the point. We’ve stopped believing that the sacred is sacred. We’ve convinced ourselves that to reach the world, we must become like the world—even in our sanctuaries.

Another voice on X said it perfectly:

“Every line of this ‘installation’—‘Are you there?’ ‘Do you regret your creation?’—reveals the modern clergy’s nervous breakdown. The faith that once proclaimed truth now questions itself in neon letters. The cathedral hasn’t been vandalized by outsiders; it’s vandalized itself from within, trading reverence for relevance and beauty for gimmickry.”

Even our own Vice-President, J. D. Vance, weighed in:

“It is weird to me that these people don’t see the irony of honoring ‘marginalized communities’ by making a beautiful historical building really ugly.”

Chasing Relevance

There’s a mini-revival of spiritual things happening in England. The culture is asking the kind of questions the Church has the answers to.

But the Church of England is pretending it doesn’t know.
It’s feigning dumb.
Acting mute.
Trying not to sound self-assured, as if questions are always better than answers.

This impulse—to make faith “relatable”—has infected churches for decades. It sounds noble: We want to reach people where they are. But in practice, it becomes a slow death.

I learned this early in ministry. In seminary, the question was always, How can I make the Gospel relevant to modern life? It sounds harmless enough. But once you make relevance your goal, you’ll bend anything to achieve it.

You’ll dress up the message, sand off the edges, trade truth for tone. And little by little, you start to lose the very thing you meant to share.

It’s not murder with a knife. It’s murder by compromise—a slow, smiling suffocation of the sacred.

The Gospel Doesn’t Need Makeup

But the Gospel doesn’t need to be dressed up. The Holy Spirit is already at work in the world. He stirs hearts, awakens hunger, and draws people to Christ. Our job is not to sell Jesus, but to show him.

Not to lure, but to present Him to the world.

“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” That’s enough. That sentence could fill a cathedral all by itself. The Gospel is inherently beautiful, inherently magnetic.

It doesn’t need graffiti to make it interesting.

Read it all.

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Victor Davis Hanson (FN): When Liberals Play Confederates. Portland’s Revolt Against America

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Hanson offers a spot on analysis of what is happening in Portland, OR. Yet the problem runs much deeper than even his excellent analysis posits; it is not just a “Democrat or Left problem,” perverse and bizarre as the party has become; rather, it is a problem of the human condition that we all share. At it’s core, it is the spirit of lawlessness and chaos unleashed that have gripped this country and that stem from rebellious and sinful hearts that we inherited in and through the Fall (Genesis 1-3), and barring God’s merciful and gracious intervention on our behalf, our country his headed for (self-) destruction. This is one of the ways God’s terrible judgment plays out on nations that forsake his laws (see, e.g., Romans 1.18-32; 2 Thessalonians 2.9-12) and it is a fearsome and terrible thing to behold, especially for those involved. Pray to Christ that this does not ultimately happen to us to destroy the high ideals that made this nation great in the first place. Secularism isn’t the answer. Neither is rejection of our Judeo-Christian heritage—these two factors helped get us where we are! No, only repentance and spiritual renewal after the manner of Christ can save us, and then only through the sheer mercy and grace of God the Father. Other nations have been down this path before and it rarely if ever is pretty. Let all who love this country humble themselves and commit to regular prayer and fasting, that the Lord might be merciful to us and spare us. Lord have mercy on us. Christ have mercy on us. Lord have mercy on us. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

In blue cities across America — Portland, Oregon, especially — often violent protesters now seek to surround ICE facilities to stop federal officers from fulfilling their assigned and legal duties of arresting illegal aliens.

Some 10 million or more illegal aliens were allowed to enter the U.S. during the Joe Biden years — illegally and thus without criminal or health checks.

Neither Antifa nor liberal urban America objected to such a flagrant disregard for the law. But both are now as intent on obstructing the legal enforcement of the law as they were earlier in favor of its illegal non-enforcement.

Much less did they care about the consequences of sending millions of foreign nationals into cities and counties where they swamped social services, spiked crime, and flooded emergency rooms and schools.

ICE has repeatedly presented data that show in its first rounds of deportations, it is concentrating on removing either criminal illegal aliens or those who have already been processed with deportation orders, somewhere between 70 and 90% of all current apprehensions.

No matter.

Left-wing protesters are swarming ICE headquarters in Portland to violently oppose all deportations, even those of known criminals and those who have already exhausted efforts to remain here illegally.

…The reigning moralistic assumption is that ceding territory to terrorists, not enforcing local and state laws, and nullifying federal statutes are all small prices to pay for the larger projection of chaos and violence that can be blamed on Trump.

Such thinking entails utter indifference to any Portlanders who live near the siege and are nightly subjected to constant disruptions, harassment, and occasional violence. Do these law-abiding residents have fewer civil rights than the lawbreaking armies of the night?

In contrast, the use of federal troops to stop the siege of ICE facilities will remind the violent protesters of the left that their neo-Confederate tactics will not work, but instead subject them to arrest and federal indictments.

Bringing in federal forces to uphold the law will also protect the rights of ICE personnel and neighborhood residents to live in peace and security and have their constitutional protections secured. Not all American citizens are Portlanders, but all Portland citizens are Americans.

In other words, both Antifa and the appeasing Oregon officials are our new neo-Confederate secessionists. They feel that their states are now autonomous entities that are still entitled to federal money but not obligated to follow federal laws.

Read and reflect on it all.

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Mike Sabo (The American Mind): This Is Charlie Kirk’s America

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A troubling, if interesting piece. I too am concerned about the number of misguided people in our great nation who embrace unreality and lawlessness in all its myriad forms, lawlessness being the very definition of sin. Anyone who claims to love God and country must stand firm against both unreality and lawlessness, irrespective of their source, because this is much more than just a political matter or clash; it is war being waged on the forces of Good by the forces of Evil. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

“Now that everyone has seen the blatant white Christian nationalism on display at the Kirk memorial/political rally, here are some resources to help you learn more and resist more effectively.” This sentence was posted on X by Jemar Tisby, a protégé of the huckster Ibram X. Kendi. Tisby followed up that observation by helpfully pointing people to his own book, Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity with Racism, as a manual to combat the grave evils they had just witnessed in State Farm Stadium.

That Tisby would think to write and then publish this sentiment about Charlie Kirk’s memorial service shows the depths to which the Left has sunk. They are categorically rejecting the bonds of civic friendship that are necessary to keep our country whole. Instead of centering “whiteness,” they center race-based narcissism, envy, and pride, the modern Left’s unholy trinity.

I realize that using the term “they” angers people like Karl Rove, but there’s currently a political movement in America—the Left—that’s increasingly giddy as violence is being directed against their foes. Yes, only one leftist pulled the trigger—but the Left as a whole prepared the ground for that demonic action by constantly dehumanizing their political opponents by calling them “fascists,” “Nazis,” and worse, shouting down and even assaulting speakers on college campuses, and backing a massive network of far-left extremist organizations that are dedicated to upending civil society by any means necessary.

If the point of the Left’s project is humiliation, the way they carry it out is through a systematic assault on the basic ways of life that have been practiced in this country for hundreds of years.

Tent revivals, open-air preaching to the masses, altar calls, and seemingly miraculous, on-the-spot conversions are thoroughly American. The words of the King James Bible have been peppered in political speeches throughout our nation’s history, as has the imagery of America as the new Israel and Americans as the “almost chosen people,” in Lincoln’s weighty phrase. Preachers and politicians taught that the Good News of freedom from slavery and other forms of despotism flowed from the Good News of Christianity. Election sermons were given for centuries, especially around the time of the American Revolution (read Ellis Sandoz’s two-volume collection if you haven’t already done so). Even the blatantly unorthodox Benjamin Franklin raved about George Whitefield’s preaching in his Autobiography.

That these folkways have waned in recent times indicates that we’ve lost our way and should return to our traditions. But the Left wants us to draw precisely the opposite lesson: that our nation has been a racist hellhole for nearly the entirety of its existence, which is why our heritage should be rejected in toto.

Read it all.

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Jonathon Van Maren (FT): As Long as You’re Living

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A compelling and thought-provoking article with which I wholeheartedly agree. Our lives and our bodies are not ours to do with as we please, contrary to popular belief. Our lives and bodies are God’s because he has purchased them with the Blood of his dearly beloved Son, Jesus Christ to save us from the power and inevitable results of our sin—our eternal destruction. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

I first heard Robert Munsch in second grade. Our teacher read his 1986 classic Love You Forever to our class, and like almost everyone who heard the story as a child and read it to his or her own children years later, the cadences of the mother’s beautiful lullaby stayed with me: “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.”

I had to grow up to grasp the beauty of the book’s ending. The boy, now a man and a father, cradles his frail, ailing mother, and sings the lullaby back to her as her own voice breaks and fades, changing the last line by two words: “As long as you’re living, my mommy you’ll be.” When he was a baby, a boy, and a teen, his mother covered his vulnerabilities with unconditional love. Now, as she’s dying, it’s his turn to gather her into his arms. 

That last phrase—“as long as you’re living”—took on a heartbreaking significance with the news that Munsch, who lives in Canada, has been approved for euthanasia (referred to by the Orwellian euphemism “medical aid in dying,” or MAID). According to his daughter Julie, Munsch first mentioned that he was planning to die by euthanasia in a 2021 interview with the CBC after being diagnosed with dementia, but the decision made headlines when Munsch discussed his choice in an interview with the New York Times published on September 14.

The eighty-year-old author told the Times that his memory and creative processes are declining. “I can feel it going further and further away,” he said. This, as well as witnessing his brother’s death from Lou Gehrig’s disease, prompted him to apply for euthanasia. “Hello, Doc—come kill me!” he joked. “How much time do I have? Fifteen seconds!” Munsch added that his death has not yet been scheduled, but that by law he must be able to consent just prior to the lethal injection that will kill him.

“I have to pick the moment when I can still ask for it,” he told the Times. The news coverage of the interview prompted his daughter to post a clarifying statement online: “My father IS NOT DYING!!!” she wrote. “Thanks to everyone and their well wishes, however, my father’s choice to use MAID was in fact made 5 years ago. . . . My dad is doing well but of course with a degenerative disease it can begin to progress quickly at any point.”

The public interest in Munsch’s decision to opt for euthanasia, of course, is because he is one of the most famous children’s authors in the world. Munsch, an American by birth who moved to Canada in 1975, has sold more than 30 million copies of his over seventy books. For countless children, Munsch was—and is—a fixture; he is the most stolen author at the Toronto Public Library. Now, if he decides to go through with his decision, the name “Robert Munsch” will forever be tied to Canada’s euthanasia regime, and he will join the more than 60,000 Canadians who have already been legally killed.

For advocates of euthanasia and assisted suicide, Munsch’s choice is a triumph for autonomy. But it is much more than that. Munsch is making a very public value judgment. A life with dementia, he believes, is a life not worth living. Indeed, he said that he is worried about waiting too long to take the plunge into eternity because, as he told his wife Ann, if he can no longer legally consent, “you’re stuck with me being a lump.”

The description made me almost physically recoil. I love someone who suffers from dementia and treasure every moment I have with her. People suffering from dementia are not “lumps,” as Munsch says—and I hope his loved ones have made that very clear to him. Perhaps they have. But Munsch does not need their permission to die—he only needs permission from the state. In Canada, the government decides who is eligible for a state-funded and facilitated lethal injection, and who is not.

Because euthanasia is not, in fact, a “free choice.” It is a choice granted only to some. By passing legislation determining who qualifies, the government has pre-selected those they believe have lives so valuable they are legally barred from suicide, and those with lives so worthless they can be assisted in their demise. In fact, a “provider” can come to your home and dispatch you in the comfort of familiar surroundings. Many like Robert Munsch, fearful after a devastating diagnosis of what the future might hold, become suicidal. The government does not affirm their worth but affirms their suicidal ideation.

Read and reflect on it all (free user account with First Things required).

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