HOME / NEWS / HUMAN INTEREST

Trump orders 245 statues for National Garden of American Heroes, Internet confused Christopher Columbus on list

The Executive Order proposes statues of many famous names including John Adams, Muhammad Ali, Susan B. Anthony, Hannah Arendt, Alexander Graham Bell, Kobe Bryant, Johnny Cash, Emily Dickinson and many more

“So, Christopher Columbus, who died in 1506 and who never set foot in North America is going to be in the ‘National Garden of American Heroes’ (or is he talking about the movie director)?” asked a Twitter user on Monday, January 18. Donald Trump on Monday, as he began his final 48 hours as president, issued an amended executive order that added dozens of names slated to be honored in the National Garden of American Heroes monument project he unveiled in July 2020.

The list of names announced by Trump in the amendment was excruciatingly long. The Executive Order proposes statues of many famous names including, John Adams, Muhammad Ali, Susan B. Anthony, Hannah Arendt, Alexander Graham Bell, Kobe Bryant, Johnny Cash, Julia Child, Christopher Columbus, Emily Dickinson, Walt Disney, Amelia Earhart, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Dwight Eisenhower, Henry Ford, Aretha Franklin, Benjamin Franklin, Milton Friedman, Robert Frost, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ulysses S. Grant, Alexander Hamilton, Alfred Hitchcock, Andrew Jackson, John F. Kennedy, Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Rosa Parks, Elvis Presley, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Nikola Tesla, Henry David Thoreau, Harriet Tubman, George Washington, Walt Whitman, and many more. The list contains a total of 245 names. 

This list got many wondering about how they were selected at all. But mostly, people were baffled as to why names like Arendt and Parks were in the same list as someone like Columbus or Antonin Scalia. 

Columbus being on the list makes little sense. During four separate trips that started with the one in 1492, Columbus landed on various Caribbean islands that are now the Bahamas as well as the island later called Hispaniola. He also explored the Central and South American coasts. But he didn’t reach North America. Also, Michele de Cuneo, who participated in Columbus's second expedition to the Americas, said that Columbus ordered 1,500 men and women seized, letting 400 go and condemning 500 to be sent to Spain, and another 600 to be enslaved by Spanish men remaining on the island. He committed atrocities against native peoples on the islands and decimated their populations, according to the biography ‘Columbus’ by Laurence Bergreen.

On the other hand, German-Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt is someone who would have likely been one of Trump’s harshest critics today. Her book, ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’, could very well be a critique of any right-wing regime of today -- including Trump’s -- and not just the one she witnessed, the Third Reich. One quote from her book, among many, may point to the above: “Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”

Justice Antonin Scalia again is a questionable choice as a hero -- he was consistently opposed to LGBTQ rights. He opposed striking down states' anti-sodomy laws. He opposed striking down the federal ban on same-sex marriage. And he opposed striking down states' bans on same-sex marriage.