After the die-in, they hung a sign around the neck of the statue of the Great Emancipator.

During a 2016 Columbus Day protest conducted by Wunk Sheek, a Native American student organization, activists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus hosted a “die-in” at Bascom Hall, near a statue of President Abraham Lincoln.

According to The Daily Cardinal, a campus newspaper, the protest ended with the group hanging a sign on the Lincoln monument that said “#DecolonizeOurCampus.”

What made Lincoln a target of decolonization?

“Everyone thinks of Lincoln as the great, you know, freer of slaves, but let’s be real: He owned slaves, and as natives, we want people to know that he ordered the execution of native men,” said one of the protesters.

“Just to have him here at the top of Bascom is just really belittling.”

Somebody just failed their midterm. Lincoln had no slaves, and the “Dakota War” wasn’t quite so simple. But whatevs.

The “slippery slope” is a logical fallacy. Just because something can slide from rational and substantively sound into emotional and absurd doesn’t mean it has to. Then again, it also doesn’t mean it won’t. Statues of Confederate soldiers erected during the civil rights era were not legitimate historical artifacts. They deserved to be removed. They were, as those who complained of them, homages to a culture of white supremacy, of slavery. And the confederacy lost.

But what did that have to do with Lincoln, the president whose Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in the Confederate states? There has to be something to hate about him, whether it’s made up of whole cloth or merely a gross misunderstanding of historical fact.

Of course, it could have stopped with Thomas Jefferson, whose relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings, has long been known and is well-documented. Or not. Where will the slide end? Certainly the Father of our Country, George Washington, . . . oh crap.

Leaders at the church that George Washington attended decided that a plaque honoring the first president of the United States must be removed.

Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia will take down a memorial marking the pew where Washington sat with his family, saying it is not acceptable to all worshipers.

A plaque on a pew? Why?

“The plaques in our sanctuary make some in our presence feel unsafe or unwelcome,” leaders said, a reference to the fact that Washington was a slaveholder.

“Some visitors and guests who worship with us choose not to return because they receive an unintended message from the prominent presence of the plaques.”

Does a plaque make people feel “unsafe or unwelcome”? So the “leaders” decided. It’s not as if George Washington was an historical figure of some significance, worthy of note for being the First President (provided you’re not of the view that John Hanson was really the first president) of the United States of America.

Judge Kopf raised the specter of demolishing the statue of Chief Justice John Marshall. In the scheme of things, that seems almost quaint when George Washington can’t pass muster. It is certainly true that the slippery slope is a logical fallacy. It is similarly true that it happens.

There was a “conceptual ledge” that could have, and should have, stopped the slide, as the Confederate statues are nothing like the historical artifacts of this nation. There was a clear, rational stopping point to the slide from a sound idea to insanity. That didn’t stop the woke from leaping blindly off the ledge anyway.

So who wants to be the one to stand before the angry mob of warriors and explain why they’re wrong?