When protesters tore down a statue of Edward Carmack, a 1900s politician who openly advocated for lynchings, outside of the Tennessee Capitol building last week, it didn’t seem like a great loss. To be sure, decisions about which statues go where should be made in a civilized manner, not by mobs armed with paint, ropes, and brute force. But in a reasonable and suitably democratic process, I would argue against keeping a statue honoring a man who believed in and called for such lawless violence.

I had a similar feeling about Jefferson Davis’s statue in Richmond. But then, Philadelphia protesters went and defaced a statue of Matthias Baldwin, an abolitionist who had attacked slavery, fought for black people’s right to vote, and founded a school for black children that he ran largely out of his own pocket. He did more to advance the principles of equality and justice than most people alive today, yet protesters slandered his memory with the words “colonizer” and “murderer” spray-painted in bright red across his face.