Would the world be a better place without the United States? Would humanity be more prosperous without Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, Google, and Visa? Would some other country have invented doughnuts, paperclips, fire hydrants, fortune cookies, sunglasses, deodorant, air conditioning, the Jerry Springer Show, and smartphones? Would the democracies, unaided, have beaten Nazism and communism?

Vice President Kamala Harris doesn’t care. That is the only way to read her claim that Christopher Columbus’s discoveries, and the European settlement that followed them, were “shameful.”