As with everything politics, there is a tactical aspect to all this as well. Alumni of my high school in Virginia want to rename the school (which is named after Thomas Jefferson). Statues of George Washington are being torn down. The Mayor of Albany recently ordered the removal of a statue of Philip Schuyler (the father of Alexander Hamilton's wife, featured in the musical Hamilton). And we're just getting started.
Obviously the slippery slope doesn't change the propriety of any given thing: I still think tearing down statues of confederates is warranted. But politics is tactical. Each side is always thinking about the next battlefield. There are many people who are calling for a "fundamental" restructuring of America. They attack everything from the Constitution to capitalism--the very bones of our Republic--and demand relitigation of our very founding principles. (And it's hard to blame them! There is no denying that, however marvelous our Constitution may be, not a single one of the millions of enslaved Americans ratified it.) They aren't just radicals, either--their books are being included on everything from school to corporate reading lists, and are routinely quoted in the New York Times, etc. I don't know if southerners who cling to the "southern way of life" think about it expressly in those terms, but I do think that they have the feeling that it does not end with the confederate flag and the statues of Jefferson Davis, but there is a reckoning ahead that's much larger.
Obviously the slippery slope doesn't change the propriety of any given thing: I still think tearing down statues of confederates is warranted. But politics is tactical. Each side is always thinking about the next battlefield. There are many people who are calling for a "fundamental" restructuring of America. They attack everything from the Constitution to capitalism--the very bones of our Republic--and demand relitigation of our very founding principles. (And it's hard to blame them! There is no denying that, however marvelous our Constitution may be, not a single one of the millions of enslaved Americans ratified it.) They aren't just radicals, either--their books are being included on everything from school to corporate reading lists, and are routinely quoted in the New York Times, etc. I don't know if southerners who cling to the "southern way of life" think about it expressly in those terms, but I do think that they have the feeling that it does not end with the confederate flag and the statues of Jefferson Davis, but there is a reckoning ahead that's much larger.