The individualism, religious fervor, and history-shaping vision of Christopher Columbus launched a new epoch, one where men with the same ideals and greatness as Columbus founded a new country. It is time for a new generation to take up the torch and preserve the birthright we have received thanks to Columbus.
Today is Columbus Day, a holiday originally established both to honor the Genoese explorer who discovered the Americas and to combat discrimination against Italian Americans. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the birth of another giant of Western Civilization from the Italian Peninsula — namely, the ancient Roman poet Publius Vergilius Maro or Vergil (Virgil). These two men, both of them important in Western history and greatly admired by our Founding Fathers and other U.S. patriots, provide inspiring examples for us today.
Christopher Columbus was a Genoese commoner shipwrecked off Portugal’s coast. He could not convince the Portuguese king to back a voyage to find a new route to India (the Portuguese believed the distance too long), his wife died, and even after he received Spanish royal backing and started the voyage, he barely prevented his mutinous men from turning back.
Following his amazing discovery of the Americas, he was imprisoned and had to stand trial on wrongful accusations against his rule as governor. His life was a series both of tragedies and of successes. Yet his spirit was never broken.
No personal loss and no false accusations or refusals could stop him. He had a vision and he pursued it with courage, perseverance, and faith in God (in fact, bringing the Gospel to the natives was one of his main motives in the New World, and he assisted some natives in fighting the tyranny of American cannibals).
Columbus was a genius, a one-of-a-kind man, yet so many of the explorers, soldiers, pioneers, statesmen, and patriots who came to the New World and who built our nation, the United States of America, shared his spirit. If only we would have that spirit today, we could reclaim and rebuild our struggling nation.
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In conclusion, I would like to share a quotation from Vergil encapsulating Columbus’s truly American spirit. The Founding Fathers saw America as the New Rome — hence we are a republic, not a democracy — and greatly admired the works of Vergil, so this is appropriate.
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Vergil wrote, “Yield thou not to adversity, but press on the more bravely (Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audientior ito).” Columbus lived out those words. The Founding Fathers lived out those words.
From George Washington to Abraham Lincoln, from Alexander Hamilton to U.S. Grant, from Booker T. Washington to Ronald Reagan, and from John Adams to George Patton, Americans have championed liberty and justice and introduced new ideas and inventions. Donald Trump urged us to “fight, fight, fight” for America, and we should do so, yielding not to adversity but pressing on all the more bravely, just as Christopher Columbus did.
