Commentary by Jarrett Stepman / @JarrettStepman / August 15, 2017URL of the original posting site: http://dailysignal.com/2017/08/15/mob-rule-prevails-durham-toppling-confederate-statue/
A protester kicks a toppled Confederate soldier statue after it was pulled down in Durham, North Carolina. (Photo: Casey Toth/TNS/Newscom)
Reported Overnight the city of Baltimore removed every vestige of the Confederacy from their streets in the ongoing effort to placate leftist agitators. On Monday night the Baltimore City Council voted to “destroy” all of the Confederate monuments in their city. On Tuesday night Baltimore’s mayor Catherine Pugh directed city crews to do the work of removing the monuments.
Among the most famous of the statues removed was the monument to Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson which had stood in the Wyman Park Dell since 1948.
Across the country, cities like New Orleans and Louisville have been removing or relocating monuments, but the events in Charlottesville are causing some city councils to hasten their plans.
Based on the events in Virginia, the mayor of Lexington, Kentucky, announced on Saturday that he is expediting his city’s plans to remove Confederate statues from public locations in the city.
In June, workers dismantled a Confederate memorial in St. Louis, Missouri. The monument’s removal began the same day an agreement was reached between the city and several groups that sued to have the monument stay in place, according to reports.
Since 1925, the 6-foot monument has stood in the Confederate section of the cemetery, where more than 30 Confederate veterans, along with their families, are buried. The monument will be taken to a storage site within the next 24 hours, cemetery officials said, but the grave markers will remain.
This week, Hollywood Forever was fielding as many as 60 calls and emails a day from people requesting the cemetery get rid of the monument, said Tyler Cassity, the cemetery’s president and co-owner. A Change.org petition calling for its removal drew more than 1,300 signatures.
On Tuesday, someone vandalized the granite boulder monument, Cassity said, using a black marker to write “No” across its bronze plaque.
Atlanta’s Democrats and other leftist leaders have been discussing the idea of destroying the Stone Mountain monument for the last few years, ever since this anti-history movement began trending on the left. However, this is the first time that a possible mainstream candidate has offered their support of the memorial’s destruction.
One of the gubernatorial candidates is calling for the removal of Confederate statues and monuments from around the state, including Stone Mountain’s Civil War carving.
The Democratic party front-runner for governor, Stacy Abrams, said the carving of three Confederate leaders at Stone Mountain, which is designated by state law as an official Confederate memorial site, should be removed.
“It is 2017, and now is the time for us to have a conversation about removing the last vestiges of that type of hatred and that type of vitriol toward minority communities in Georgia,” Abrams told Channel 2’s Richard Elliot.
But hey, who cares about facts?
Onan is the Editor-in-Chief at Romulus Marketing. He’s also the managing editor at Eaglerising.com, Constitution.com and the managing partner at iPatriot.com. Onan is a graduate of Liberty University (2003) and earned his M.Ed. at Western Governors University in 2012. Onan lives in Atlanta with his wife and their three wonderful children. You can find his writing all over the web.
What Did You Say? 
While the media spent its time connecting riots to the political right, the hard left continued to step up its tactics to promote social discord, as it has been doing for years.
On Monday afternoon, a crowd of people in an “Emergency Durham Protest” marched down Durham’s Main Street, then made its way to the Durham County Courthouse. The Herald Sun reported that organizations like the “Triangle People’s Assembly, Workers World Party, Industrial Workers of the World, Democratic Socialists of America, and the Antifa movement” were at the rally.
One of the participants, Eva Panjwani of the Workers World Party Durham, said in an interview:
The larger group was comprised of people demonstrating with various left-wing slogans such as a “No Trump, No KKK, No Racist USA” banner, pro-socialist Che Guevara shirts, and numerous odes to abolishing capitalism. One individual held a sign that said, “Cops and clan go hand in hand,” as the group marched past police officers.
The crowd gathered in front of the courthouse and decided to target a statue that was created in memoriam to “the boys who wore the gray.” That is, the North Carolina soldiers who fought for the Confederate Army in the Civil War.
>>> I Went to Charlottesville During the Protests. Here’s What I Saw.
What followed was a scene reminiscent of the French Revolution or the war in Iraq.
The rage-filled protesters tore down the statue and proceeded to kick and desecrate it. The surging mass of people hooted and hollered as individuals took turns spitting on and flipping off the generic visage of a young Southern soldier.
In the aftermath, some of the protesters took pictures in front of the crumpled-up bronze statue that had been pulverized in the fall.
However, the attack was fitting as a mirror to the “alt-right” march that had taken place at the foot of a Gen. Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville. The individuals portrayed by the monuments were simply irrelevant.
>>> Why Cities Shouldn’t Take Down Confederate Statues
This isn’t a battle over ideas or the Confederacy’s place in American history, it’s sheer and mindless identity politics.
American towns and cities are now increasingly being besieged by agitators who flaunt the law, direct their hate toward fellow citizens, and openly attack the crucial principles at the heart of the American way of life. The resounding message that these events send is that in 2017, it’s impossible for this country to accept people of different creeds and points of views. You are either on the “right side of history,” as President Barack Obama said, or you are on the wrong side. The narrative is increasingly join us, or be crushed.
Perhaps the protesters should pay more attention to what happened in our Civil War, which claimed more lives than all of our other wars combined. Perhaps they should study the leaders who, however imperfectly, tried to bind regions and people together to move on from a civil feud that pitted brother against brother and American against American. And perhaps they should have studied the people, like Lee and President Abraham Lincoln, who tried to piece the shattered puzzle of American nationhood back together.
Alas, those concepts were lost in a sordid trampling of an old, barely noticed statue. Unless leaders pay increased devotion to denouncing and taking action against these lawless demonstrations, mob rule is here to stay.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jarrett Stepman/ @JarrettStepman