It only created conflict if people attacked it giving it publicity it would have never had otherwise.
he conflict existed the moment such an inherently offensive monument was erected in full view of the public. At that point, the choice was between ignoring it to try to starve it of attention, or to speak out against it so its message doesn't go unanswered. I think the latter is the wiser choice. This is how a decent society defines what is and isn't viewed as appropriate behavior. I'm not saying it should be burned down, or anything of that sort. That would only play into the hands of the hateful agitators who built the thing. But we should speak out against it.
I see it as analogous to what you should do if you hear a racist joke. In theory, you can just shut your mouth, out of fear that if you repudiate it, you're just giving it more attention. But if you do, that just encourages more such jokes, and fosters a culture where people feel at liberty to use such conduct to put minorities in their place, and minorities are just supposed to keep their heads down and take it. Better to speak out against it -- make it socially awkward for the racist. Make it clear to his intended victims that they are not alone and are not required to keep quiet and take it.
It even creates opposition from those who otherwise don't care one way or the other about a confederate monument but don't like others telling them what they can and cannot do.
I don't believe that's a significant impact, relative to the positive impact from speaking out. Think of it this way: for generations, few dared speak out against these travesties, and so for a very long time, such monuments just proliferated, with the purveyors of hate being emboldened by the way they'd cowed their targets. Then people started protesting. Sure, that hurt the feelings of some terrible people. But it also started to change the culture, from one of solidarity with the Cult of the Confederacy, to one of solidarity with the victims of their racism. Now confederate monuments are no longer proliferating. For every new one set up, several are removed. Public opinion has been turning against them.
I'm not saying that you're entirely wrong -- that no opposition has been created among those who otherwise don't care. I'm sure there has been. Some people who don't particularly care about history, and thus would otherwise be uninterested in an historical monument, may well become quite exercised in favor of it by the outrage of people of color "telling them what they can and cannot do." But, I think that's a smaller effect than the positive effect of standing up for what's right.
What this couple is doing is fine, but attacking people in their home, restaurant, or public because we simply disagree with their political views
is disgusting and does not have the same moral standing as being against confederate monuments.
Here, I think, we're mostly agreed, though I see a gray area. I'd treat it as off-limits confronting a politician in the presence of his minor children, or even non-political adult children. I don't like the idea of innocent victims. However, I think it's appropriate for citizens to make their voices heard to the politicians themselves, in public.
If Ted Cruz is spending our tax money on a meal in public, why shouldn't we be able to tell him what we think he should be doing in exchange for that money? We're his bosses. He works for us. Now, if he has open access to the public in other spheres -- non-filtered town hall meetings, open office hours, and the like, then it's more appropriate to use those to give him a piece of our minds. But if he walls off those who haven't written him a big campaign check or proven their submission to his political ideals, then we need to use forums of opportunity to give him a piece of our minds.
There's a cost to be paid for a politician who shits on the American people and then eliminates any polite avenues for them to communicate with him: he loses peaceful access to the public sphere, because those he is hurting will use those places as their only chance to speak up.
