Columbus's Requiem

The Lie of Post-Liberalism

We still remember Christopher Columbus. That’s a remarkable thing, separated from him by some five hundred years. But more important is why we remember him.

The Italian explorer had been on the seas since age 14, and he had led a remarkable career even before his daring expedition to the New World. And contrary what you were likely told in school, Columbus didn’t “mistakenly” stumble upon the Americas.¹ He was a supremely competent seafarer who called his shot and landed right on the money. He was not, however, ultimately successful in colonization. And this brings us to a curious paradox in our understanding of the man.

There is a class of people calling themselves conservatives — Roman Catholics typified by men like Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermeule, and Sohrab Ahmari — who wish you to remember Columbus chiefly for his membership in the Roman Catholic Church, and more broadly for his evangelical efforts. Now, in fairness to Columbus, it is not as though he did not care about evangelization, but the idea that this was his primary motivating factor is naïve in the extreme. And this is something of a calling card for these “Post-Liberal” Roman Catholics.

In one of the post-liberal organs, a Substack titled “The American Postliberal,” there are several pieces under the heading “The 1492 Project.” The history is sloppy and barely makes any attempt to connect its suppositions to things that actually happened. The overall effort is an attempt to reframe America in light of a “Catholic” founding which is alleged to have begun with Columbus before the evil Protestants showed up with American exceptionalism, colonialism, and racism. The author in paragraph after paragraph attempts to throw wool over the eyes of the reader, stating that the Reformation started in 1517,² and that Calvinism believes in “material success as a sure sign of moral superiority,” among many other half-truths and obfuscations.

And just as a half-century ago the consensus historians butchered the American détente about the Civil War, so too do their spiritual successors, lacking their subtlety, attempt to butcher the history of the Americas, to set brother against brother once more. It makes sense, of course, to slap some of Columbus’s evangelical ambitions on top of some vague rhetoric of papist dreams for the New World, but just as with the 1619 Project it is riffing from, it is a mile wide and an inch deep. And more crucially for us, it is just another vision of the supposed original sins of America that doomed it. The article states: “As opposed to Catholic America, Protestant America had liberalism built-in.”³

The important thing to note here is that “post-liberalism” is explicitly setting itself against any sort of continuity with the American Colonies, Republic, and Empire. When they say “liberalism,” they mean America, and everything our ancestors have fought for in the four centuries since successful North American colonies were founded. Christopher Sandbatch helpfully explains:

Liberalism, formally, is the ex post facto linguistic assignment to the result of devolving social power away from magic dirt theory to the civil society. So, it perfectly encompasses everything Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson tried to do.

Though it purports to be the opposite, this “post-liberalism” is in practice regime apologia.⁴ Holy Scripture tells us, “By their fruits ye shall know them,”⁵ and the fruits of post-liberalism are vaccine tyranny, apologia for mass immigration, and sustained attacks on the living, breathing heritage of America. America may not have been founded by Catholics, but they command an astounding number of our high offices, with the President himself, the former Speaker, and 7 of our 9 Supreme Court Justices claiming that tradition.

These people want you to believe that the problem with America is that it is not integrated into the Roman Catholic Church, and that this church represents the arbiter of the “common good” which we must all come under. When Columbus spotted the Americas, the sitting pope was Rodrigo de Borgia, who was known for his debauchery, corruption, and general despotism. The Catholic Church was not some selfless evangelical mission, but a savvy geopolitical player intent on bringing the New World into the same political economy that they dominated in the Old World. Borgia would famously divide the world in two, handing each respective geopolitical ally the “right” to all they could possess. But they could not hold on to it, as their colonies tended to exist purely as extractive enterprises to send gold and other valuables back to Europe. Indeed, the Spanish and Portuguese settlements were far more effective than were those of the Anglos at extracting capital to send back to their masters. But then, the Anglos had a different plan altogether.

Massachusetts Bay’s royal charter, which would never have been granted them without the hard geopolitics between Spain and England, was a dream worthy of Columbus’s daring — a dream not of simple resource extraction points, but a new and wholly independent Commonwealth, where virtue and quality, rather than gold, would mark men.

And Columbus himself, whom the Anglo-Americans chose to honor above all other explorers of the New World, typifies these qualities that won the Anglos the world that Pope Borgia had promised to Spain — excellence, daring, and faith. In an address on Columbus before the Pan-American Conference in January 1928, President Calvin Coolidge said:

While the law is necessary for the proper guidance of human action, and will always remain the source of freedom and liberty and the ultimate guaranty of all our rights, there is another element in our experience that must be taken into consideration. We read that “The letter killeth but the spirit giveth life.” Oftentimes in our international relationship we shall have to look to the spirit rather than to the letter of the law. We shall have to realize that the highest law is consideration, cooperation, friendship, and charity. Without the application of these there can be no peace and no progress, no liberty, and no republic. These are the attributes that raise human relationships out of the realm of the mechanical, above the realm of animal existence, into the loftier sphere that borders on the Divine. If we are to experience a new era in our affairs, it will be because the world recognizes and lives in accordance with this spirit. Its most complete expression is the Golden Rule.⁶

Insofar as America is a concrete political economy and not mere ideology, it is Anglo-Protestant. Our forebears did indeed keenly suspect Rome and all her bishops, and yet our Anglo-Protestant forefathers also recognized those qualities that they shared with those of the Roman Catholic faith who allied with them in the American Project. Men like Charles Carroll, Patrick Buchanan, and Christopher Columbus are a part of the history of this new political economy where daring, excellence, and faith were rewarded most of all.

And so we remember Columbus, not because he was Catholic, and not because he was first, but because his virtues are virtues that came to be identified with what it meant to be an American.

1. The American Sun (@NewAtlantisSun): “Columbus didn’t ‘die thinking he landed in China hur hur.’ He was still trying to figure out monetization, and still trying to keep his information edge (and his equity stake) intact.” October 10, 2022. twitter.com/newatlantissun/status/1579486473329704960.

2. Will Durant, along with several other key Scholars, traces the Reformation’s beginnings to the 1300s. See: Will Durant, The Reformation: The Story of Civilization, Volume VI (A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300–1564) (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957).

3. Michael Ippolito, “The 1492 Project: Two Americas,” The American Postliberal, June 19, 2023.

4. Patrick Casey (@RestoredOrderUSA): “The Post-Liberals: A cadre of conservative intellectuals who advocate for the ‘common good’ have gained influence in recent years. But since they’ve argued for vax mandates, fed infiltration of ‘conspiracy groups,’ open borders, and ‘anti-racism,’ we should be wary of them [a post].” June 16, 2023. twitter.com/restoreorderusa/status/1669826847746523136?s=46&t=oaJGepwDBt9l8MDIQzDsmQ.

5. Matthew 7:20 (KJV)

6. Calvin Coolidge, “Address before Pan American Conference,” January 16, 1928. coolidgefoundation.org/resources/address-before-pan-american-conference.