By Selwyn Duke
On this Columbus Day, it’s worth noting that the war on the eponymous explorer and other famed Western historical figures hasn’t ceased. The fate of a Columbus statue in Pittsburgh is unknown, as a legal case surrounding it proceeds, while a different Columbus statue has just received a new home in Johnston, Rhode Island, after being expelled from nearby Providence. Many other Western-hero statues are staying in place, however (for now), but only because of a compromise reached that one commentator calls a “startling victory” for the cultural devolutionaries.
In a Saturday article, English historian David Abulafia points out that we’re now living in an Orwellian time, where the past is rewritten as “Big Brother’s enemies” are “eliminated from history,” to quote the novel 1984. This brings us to the aforementioned victory: the determination “that controversial monuments should be matched by counter-memorials that set out a balanced explanation of the person or event being commemorated,” as Abulafia puts it. The commentator relates that in Britain, this policy goes by the catchphrase “Retain and Explain.”
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