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. Calls to replace it with “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” have grown over the last several decades, reflecting a broader opposition to European exploration. Critics argue that Columbus’s arrival in the Americas led to colonization, displacement, and suffering for the indigenous people. They point to the hard things Columbus did—his role in enslavement and violence—as reasons to elevate the tribal peoples of the New World above the explorers and colonists of the Old.
The push to raise tribal peoples over Europeans found formal expression in Joe Biden’s four “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” proclamations. Biden’s practice was to issue two proclamations each Columbus Day, an “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” proclamation and a legitimate “Columbus Day” proclamation. In these, he would emphasize the goodness of tribal peoples and the immorality of Columbus, and white people generally. In no proclamation did he mention anything that might embarrass America’s former tribal peoples.
The “deep concern” for historical accuracy was merely a pretext to focus on the evils of colonization—it reached no further. The reader is led to believe American Indians have existed forever, from “time immemorial,” that they are the most maligned and most patriotic group of American citizens, and that they “lead in every way.” The message is that indigenous people have rightful sovereignty over the territory presently inhabited by the white, colonial, racist United States of America.
Thankfully, President Trump issued a Columbus Day proclamation that doesn’t traffic in self-flagellation.
I doubt this kind of foolishness displayed in Biden’s proclamations is embraced by many American Indians. Of course, Americans should remember them as brave, tragic heroes. There could be a holiday praising great Indian leaders and peoples.
But such a holiday, like Columbus Day, would mean celebrating men who did hard things. Pick one of the great Indian figures from the colonial era. Try to celebrate him. See what kind of complaints come out of the woodwork. We can either have holidays about real men and actual peoples, or we can have bland holidays characterized by rage and resentment.
The complainers forget how hard the world can be and assume that the gentility made possible by civilization is a moral requirement rather than a high achievement. Additionally, proponents of “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” have to argue that the only way the Americas were going to avoid colonization was if Europeans had not set out to explore the world.
The complainers believe Columbus, upon seeing the newly discovered lands inhabited, should have turned back. He should have known that a great civilization would overwhelm the tribal peoples he found. Columbus’s decision to explore was a decision for genocide. That is how the complainers necessarily see it.
They do not merely hate Columbus for the actions he took—they hate that a civilization existed such that the scales of power were completely lopsided in the world for centuries. They hate that daring men lived to carry this civilization everywhere they went.
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. We aren’t merely celebrating a great and daring explorer—we are celebrating our right to celebrate him, our right to be proud of him, and the civilization he carried into the New World.