Their likenesses were toppled, yet they still cast long shadows

Radicals worked with revolutionary gusto in recent years to erase America’s past. In addition to melting down busts, digging up graves, renaming species, knocking out church windows, hiding artwork, killing off iconic brands, and advancing revisionist narratives, they did what all envy- and resentment-driven demolitionists — from the Jacobins to the Taliban — have done: They toppled and removed statues.

Among the giants whom the radicals fell but could never slay — a long list that includes Spanish missionary Junípero Serra and Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln — are two men in particular whose greatness not only secured for them pedestals and the ire of barbarians but made the nation today possible: George Washington and Christopher Columbus.

‘Washington laid the groundwork for the steady march toward