While the progressive left claims at all times to want to live in a democracy, the tactics they employ to bend society to their will are decidedly undemocratic.
Usually unable to push their views through legislatively – i.e., using the democratic process – progressives resort to the courts to overturn laws passed through legislation or approved by popular vote. When the courts move too slowly for them or refuse to bend to the progressive will, the progressive left resorts to violence and force.
Note that the latest progressive campaign to remove Confederate monuments is not being handled legislatively. Few, if any, votes have been held in state or local governments to determine the fate of the monuments. Instead, the progressive left – led of late by the group calling itself Antifa (antifascist) — has employed violent demonstrations that  have granted cover for cowardly administrators, mayors and governors to remove the monuments ultra vires (without authority). When intimidation didn’t work, the Antifa groups have simply banded together to destroy the monuments themselves.
A recent NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist poll found that 62 percent of Americans believe Civil War monuments should be left alone as historical symbols. Just 27 percent believe they should be removed. Even blacks, by a margin of 44-40 percent, believe the statues should stay.
The makeup of the Antifa demonstrators is telling. It’s mostly young white Marxists and social justice warriors supported by various communist organizations like the Workers World Party, Triangle People’s Assembly, Industrial Workers of the World and Democratic Socialists of America. They regularly don communist symbols like the hammer and sickle, wear clothing bearing the likeness of leftist terrorists like Che Guevara, and advocate against capitalism and for more socialism and nanny state welfare programs.
They consider Civil War monuments and Confederate flags as symbols of slavery, hate and oppression while adhering to communism, a system responsible for the mass murder of hundreds of millions and the unlawful detention of millions more in slave labor camps.
The blame for this paradox falls directly on the public (non)education system, failed government welfare programs, the broken university system and mass propaganda. These have combined to create a disaffected class of hive mind, collectivist useful idiots.
While many of these ninnymuggins have been duped into believing they are antifascists and operating to create a better social and government system, they are merely pawns in a bigger game. Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media and the political class – even so-called conservative politicos like Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio — give Antifa cover for their violent behavior while condemning Trump for calling the organization out along with the white supremacists. I discuss what’s really in play here in greater detail in Monday’s column, “It’s not about the statues.”