Christopher Columbus is having a revival thanks to President Donald Trump and the good sense of the American people.
This is a remarkable change from just a few years ago, when it seemed likely that the country was ready to purge Columbus, the Founding Fathers, and pretty much any notable figure from our past.
It was so over for Columbus Day that even some Republicans were looking to sweep it into the dustbin of history.
But we’ve come a long way since 2020.
More Americans now understand that the attack on Columbus is an attack on the idea of America itself, and that caving to the Left’s demands to strike his holiday from the calendar as his statues came tumbling down was tantamount to civilizational suicide.
Trump’s re-election ushered in a major vibe shift that was already under way. Columbus Day came back stronger than ever as part of the larger counterrevolution against the madness of the Great Awokening.
In March, a Columbus statue—a replica of one tossed by protesters into Baltimore Harbor during the post-George Floyd riots, no less—was placed in front of the White House.
And on Wednesday, Trump issued a proclamation announcing that Columbus Day would be celebrated on Oct. 12.
“Today, we reaffirm that Christopher Columbus is a legend whose vision, fortitude, and perseverance unleashed a dynamic of history that led to the creation of the greatest, freest, and most just Nation in history,” Trump’s proclamation read. “We are forever indebted to his courageous voyage, and we will never allow his legacy to be erased by radical extremists.”
That is an accurate and appropriate tribute for a man for whom we owe so much, even if Columbus never saw, considered, or had any notion of the future United States. We certainly are indebted to his incredible voyage that changed the tide of history.
But that last line from Trump about never allowing his legacy to be erased is key here, because the battle over Columbus is so important for our own day, even apart from the particulars of his life and momentous voyage.
Leftist writers like Howard Zinn and the generations of acolytes he spawned begin from the premise that the West, Christendom, is inherently broken and perhaps even the source of evil and “inequality” in our world.
The far-Left has long condemned Columbus and those who followed him into the New World as genocidal monsters, virtually boogeymen who were not only flawed as all men are but as uniquely terrible.
This is in many ways a perversion of history. The same folks who lament and often overstate the violence and malice of European arrivals in the Americas hardly seem to care about the violence and terror that preceded them. That’s irrelevant and even annoyingly inconvenient to their narrative.
What they want is a future in which Western societies—especially the people of the United States—fundamentally reject their own past, culture, traditions, and certainly their religion. That is the only way to ensure that a new, secular ideology—these days some variant of identitarian socialism or Marxism—can rush to fill the vacuum of what brings life meaning and order.
By this method of indoctrination and reprogramming, traditional Western rational skepticism was transformed into a malignant, irrational self-loathing.
The gloved, flipping off of a Columbus statue by the now-mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, is the perfect expression of this kind of deranged, knee-jerk anti-Americanism so common among the spoiled children of the global elites and the campus activist class that follows them. Columbus set set into the unknown with three small ships and a compass to guide him. These twerps cast vulgarities behind soft gloves and think they are edgy.
Columbus was once a figure whom all Americans, immigrant and native-born, could love and admire, just like our flag and our Constitution.
If it was up to the Left, he would remain only as a symbol for all who live in America, immigrant and native-born, to loathe and condemn.
Again, don’t be fooled, this battle isn’t really about a 15th-century Italian navigator, it’s about us, the here and the now, the nation that ultimately emerged from splinters of his tiny ships.
The Left thought they had finally won this battle.
It wasn’t just a few radical extremists on the fringes of college campuses who were trying to obliterate Columbus Day while putting Indigenous Peoples’ Day atop the figurative empty pedestal where he once stood. It was “mainstream” institutions and political leaders carrying out the purge too.
President Joe Biden—or perhaps a facsimile wielding an autopen—essentially declared the far-Left’s triumph in 2021. He put out a “commemoration” for Columbus Day that spent more time apologizing for the famed explorer and lamenting the “shameful” history of America than saying anything nice about him.
An Italian and some Spaniards got on a boat and did something. That was about the only positive thing he could say amid the condemnations.
This is what the Left had been building up to for a long time. This was the final blow. It was over for Columbus Day. The wheels of history had turned. The old explorer and the America he once represented were finally gone and buried for good.
We know now that the battle wasn’t over. There are still many, many Americans who aren’t so eager to jettison our past and darken our future. The battle for our future is ongoing. Columbus stands again in front of the White House, and hopefully in more communities across the United States.
This Columbus Day we should remember how far we had fallen; how close we came to the final chapter of our incredible history. Let us boldly go forward, like Columbus, with pride in our past and confidence in our future.