Goodbye, Columbus

This is not about Christopher Columbus – at least not directly so. All I ever needed to know about the “Admiral of the Ocean Sea” I’ve learned from Robert Royal’s Columbus and the Crisis of the West. (If you haven’t already purchased a copy signed by the author, click here.)

No, this is (partly) about my hometown, Columbus, Ohio, a city well-known these days for two reasons: as the home of The Ohio State University Buckeyes football team; and for the city’s ingratitude to the people of Genoa, Italy.

I’ve nothing to say about my beloved Buckeyes, whose COVID-delayed season begins a week from this coming Saturday, nothing except: Go Bucks!

But about the dreadful ignorance, avidity, and cowardice of the city’s current government, I have plenty to unpack. I apologize in advance for any lack of Christian charity in what I’m about to write.

I’ll begin at the beginning: October 12, 1955. That was when Edoardo Alfieri’s statue of the world’s greatest sailor was unveiled in Columbus, a gift from the people of Genoa, Columbus, Ohio’s first “sister city.” Sister cities were an initiative of President Eisenhower, and the Columbus-Genoa union was among the first to engage in Ike’s “citizen diplomacy” – a lovely outgrowth of the ugly realities of WWII. You’d think, maybe, the current mayor of Columbus, a Democrat named Andrew Ginther, might have thought a bit more diplomatically and historically before surrendering to the leftist mob, which he did in July by removing the statue from outside City Hall.

Click here to read the rest of Mr. Miner’s column at The Catholic Thing . . .