Daily Archives: October 13, 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.

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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.

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