Goldberg's spleen isn't a very good argument for his position. Here's a better one. Many human works-- statues and monuments, churches, government buildings, many words, some symbols--acquire multivalent meanings. An overwhelming majority of the time, the works and their meanings are simply ignored: who thinks about the Constitution when passing a government building? It has that meaning, but it has others, too: a statement of a particular government mission, a certain architectural style . . . and, in recent years, usually the name of a barely-dead Republican politician. Yet which of these meanings predominates? Similarly, a church or other religious building may be a place of prayer, but it is also the statement of a particular faith, it may be a place were some historic event occurred. The Confederate monuments do symbolize an era of white supremacy. They also symbolize leadership, courage, and nostalgia for what makes the South different.