We Can Remember Christopher Columbus Without Celebrating Him

The vital difference between reevaluation and revision

Steven Crowder has made the baseless and unsubstantiated assertion that 1) the appreciation of Western values, heritage, and collective tradition, and 2) an honest contemporary evaluation of deeply flawed historical figures are mutually exclusive.

This false dichotomy is a further example of the deficient reasoning employed by proponents of Confederate statues, Columbus Day, and a host of additional inflammatory tributes.

History and its remembrance is not a function of memorializing characters, incidents, and ideologies which are not worthy of commemoration. You will find no monuments to Adolf Hitler in Germany, no memorials to Pol Pot in Cambodia, and no widespread adulation for or statues dedicated to Queen Mary I in the United Kingdom. And yet, these men and women have not been purged from the pages of history nor forgotten by those of us who have come after them. And further, those controversial individuals who are still celebrated in modernity, such as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in Turkey, Vladimir Lenin in Russia, and Che Guevara in Cuba (to name only a few), are generally celebrated at the behest of oppressive governing institutions which limit rights to free informative expression by auditing and redacting the documentation of historical accounts and by exercising direct control over the distribution and dissemination of such records. Ironically, it is those who wish to continue observing questionable dates and people as sacrosanct who are more likely to be guilty of generating revisionist modifications to history in an effort to maintain politically expedient narratives.

The oft repeated refrain that the removal of monuments and holidays constitutes the rewriting of history is a fallacious conflation which holds neither weight nor rational significance. Remembering an event does not necessitate that we build idols to it. Recalling a person and his philosophies does not demand that we pay public homage.

And why should we celebrate Christopher Columbus? Columbus was neither the first person nor even the first European to set foot upon the American continent. Bjarni Herjólfsson and Leif Erickson both preceded Columbus in encountering the Americas, and both discovered a landmass which had already been inhabited by migrating communities for thousands of years. Columbus' voyages and expeditions were the catalyst for the death or enslavement of thousands of indigenous individuals; the explorer advocated for such policies as the subjugation and exploitation of native peoples, reported multiple incidents wherein he permitted or else personally participated in rape and sexual assault, and took numerous prisoners who were ultimately tortured and/or murdered. There is a multitude of primary source texts, witness testimony, and supplementary evidence which evinces the fact that Columbus was demonstrably one of history's most despicable tyrants. The ideologies of Columbus were categorically antithetical to those endorsed by Western civilization at large today, standing in diametric contrast to the principles of individual liberty, personal freedom, and the guaranteed right to uninhibited peace and the pursuit of prosperity. If Americans claim to espouse these fundamental beliefs, then why ought we to celebrate a man who so thoroughly and decisively violated them?

When we admire the men and women of history and the occurrences which they facilitated, we commonly adhere to a "for/in spite of model": a function of two paired statements which serve to recognize an individual's strengths and accomplishments while simultaneously conceding that (s)he was not infallible. For example: one might say that we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. FOR his invaluable contributions to the Civil Rights Movement and the abolition of the Jim Crow South, IN SPITE OF his supposed marital indiscretions and his dubiously alleged ties to the Communist Party. This method allows us to acknowledge the intrinsic and inevitable brokenness of all people while still honoring their incontrovertible benefactions to society. But when the actions of the historical figures we are recognizing are those which are in dispute, this model no longer works. We can't celebrate Columbus for discovering America, because he didn't. And when the attitudes displayed and measures implemented by Columbus are the very ones which devastated the cultures and economies of innocent people, the conquistador in question has lost all ethical merit. There is no longer a "for"; there is only an "in spite of".

We can certainly remember Columbus, but doing so doesn't require a holiday in his honor. The conjecture that replacing monuments in city squares and removing holidays from calendars corresponds with absolute historical revisionism is an empty rhetorical device deprived of all logic. A distinction must be made, identifying discrepancies between historical analysis and alteration.  Sincere reassessment of the people and events which have molded our worldview is the mark and practice of a healthy society.

Let us never wipe Christopher Columbus from the annals of history; instead, let us recollect his life by reflecting upon the stories of his victims and upon the tragic legacy of his deeds.