You can always count on woke progressives to live up to the worst caricatures of their ideas. Democrats on the New York City Council have now removed a statue of the founder of the Democratic Party, Thomas Jefferson, from the City Council chamber in New York City Hall. The statue has been in City Hall since 1834 (eight years after Jefferson’s death), when it was erected to celebrate his advocacy of religious liberty. It is a sign of how proud Democrats are of their decision that they tried to block the press from witnessing the removal.

Americans are again battling over history.

Is the year 1619 as important as 1776? Shall we tear down statues of Robert E. Lee — or go further and topple Thomas Jefferson too? Is the left telling a “twisted web of lies” (as President Trump put it) about America’s “magnificent” history, or was the U.S. indeed built on a rotten foundation of genocide, disenfranchisement, bigotry and oppression?

Angry debates have spread from social media to school board meetings to state capitols to the White House, as Americans haggle over who we really are and the past that formed us.

 I hate to admit it, but it’s true: Donald Trump was right about the monuments.

 Not about monuments to Confederate traitors like Robert E. Lee, whom Trump labeled “a great general.” Nor was he correct in claiming that military bases named after Confederates were “part of a Great American heritage.”

But Trump was right that these attacks would morph into a broader campaign to pull down memorials to the Founders of America, not just to the Southerners who took up arms against it.