Presentism, Selective Amnesia, and the Wrong Hill to Die On

We can reject modern moral time-travel without pretending Columbus was misunderstood

“Presentism” has become the intellectual sin of the age: the habit of judging historical figures by contemporary moral standards, usually with the subtlety of a Twitter mob and the historical rigor of a bumper sticker. On this, I’m largely with the critics. The past is a foreign country; they did things badly there. Moral time travel rarely ends well.

But here’s the complication nobody likes to sit with: rejecting presentism does not require us to pretend that every historical figure was admirable even by the standards of their own time. And that’s where the defense of Christopher Columbus goes off the rails.

Donald Trump’s repeated defense and celebration of Columbus—especially as a symbolic counterpunch against modern progressive iconoclasm—was rhetorically understandable but historically misguided. Columbus is not a clean test case for opposing presentism. In fact, he’s one of the worst possible choices.

What Presentism Gets Wrong (And Why It’s Still a Problem)

Let’s establish the baseline. Presentism flattens history. It assumes:

• Moral consensus exists today (it doesn’t),

• That consensus is superior (debatable),

• And that historical actors had access to the same ethical frameworks we do (they didn’t).

This leads to absurdities: medieval people condemned for not embracing modern liberal democracy, or ancient empires faulted for not having OSHA regulations. It’s a way of laundering moral vanity through historical judgment.

So far, so good.

The Columbus Problem: Not a Victim of Modern Standards

Here’s the uncomfortable part: Columbus wasn’t merely “a man of his time.” He was widely regarded as cruel, incompetent, and excessive in his own time.

This is not retrospective woke scolding. This is contemporaneous judgment.

Consider a few inconvenient facts:

• Excessive brutality: Columbus’s governance in Hispaniola involved extreme punishments—mutilations, public executions, and terror tactics—that even other Spanish colonists found excessive. This wasn’t standard operating procedure; it was noticed and criticized.

• Administrative failure: He was not just cruel, but inept. His mismanagement of the colony led to chaos, rebellion, and economic failure. Spain wanted gold and stability; Columbus delivered disorder and bad press.

• Removed from power: Columbus was eventually arrested and sent back to Spain in chains. That detail tends to get left out of statues and parades. He wore out his welcome not with modern activists, but with his own patrons—the Spanish Crown.

• Contemporary witnesses objected: Complaints about Columbus came from fellow Spaniards, clergy, and administrators. These weren’t 21st-century moralists; they were his peers.

In short, Columbus failed the “judge him by the standards of his time” test. Badly.

Symbolism vs. Accuracy

Why, then, did Trump latch onto Columbus?

Because Columbus had become a symbol—of Western civilization, exploration, and defiance of left-wing historical erasure. Defending him was less about Columbus himself and more about resisting a broader cultural purge.

That instinct is understandable. When statues fall indiscriminately and history is reduced to morality plays, pushback is necessary.

But symbolism only works if the symbol holds.

Columbus doesn’t.

Defending him doesn’t expose presentism; it muddies the argument. It hands critics an easy win and allows them to pretend that opposition to presentism requires whitewashing genuinely brutal figures.

It doesn’t.

A Better Way to Oppose Presentism

If the goal is to challenge presentism intelligently, there are far stronger cases:

• Figures whose flaws were ordinary rather than pathological,

• Individuals who were complex, contradictory, or morally mixed,

• Or people judged harshly today for beliefs that were genuinely universal in their era.

Columbus was not that guy. He was extreme, even by contemporary standards, and his fall was not the invention of modern ideology.

The Bottom Line

You can oppose presentism without canonizing villains.
You can defend history without falsifying it.
And you can criticize modern moral hysteria without choosing the weakest historical hill to die on.

Columbus doesn’t need to be erased—but he also doesn’t deserve automatic accolades. Treating him as a martyr to presentism confuses the argument and concedes the high ground.

History is complicated. Columbus wasn’t misunderstood. He was noticed—and found wanting—by the very world that empowered him.

Sometimes the past already rendered its own verdict.