Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said: “Our democracy is a work in progress,. This decision of putting a woman in the $10 bill reflects our aspirations for the future as much as a reflection of the past.”
Can you figure out what that is supposed to mean? I can’t.
If he said something like “look we have been under a lot of pressure to put pictures of women on our money and retire those old white men so we are caving in to it,” that would have been leveling with us but saying America is a “work in progress” and “aspirations for the future” and “reflection of the past” requires that a woman has to be added to the $10 bill hides the truth. You could say the same thing if you decided to put Lassie on the $1 bill instead of George Washington and Chelsea Manning on the $20 and retire Colonel Jackson.
A check back over the years (“reflection of the past”) shows the we have had women on our currency. Martha Washington was on the one dollar silver certificate, Susan B Anthony was on the $1 coin, and most recently Sacagawea was on that coin that always seemed to disappear.
Lew went on to say the change in the $10, will be “the first in a completely new series of paper currency beginning in 2020, all designed around the theme of democracy and what it means to Americans.”
You had to know that it would not take long for the new progressive forces to take over. They will use the power of their office to change things from the bad old ways. It will first be with the money; and then with the names of places; and then with the composition of elected officials. These “aspirations for the future” can pretty much mean anything other than things won’t stay the same.
The woman on the new $10. dollar bill will have to be black. That is because you cannot disregard the black presence in American. The article cited above says Harriet Tubman is the odds on favorite. I do not suppose it will be Rachel Dolezal.
When I first heard of the planned change I thought the Clinton Foundation was behind it and it planned to put Hill_Billy on the $10 and Slick Willie on the fin. I was told the tradition is the person on the money should be dead. Yes, that may be true but the way Jack Lew talked tradition is out. Hill_Billy may be the odds on favorite for the $1 if the $10 is reserved for a black woman.
One thing for sure that will have to go in the design is that old 1950s “In God We Trust.” Aspiring to be all things to all people we will not want to hurt the feelings of our fellow atheists. Then we wouldn’t want to slight the gay community or the Hispanics or the Asians or the Irish or the transgender people so room would have to be made for them. While we are coming up with new ideas maybe reflecting the “theme of democracy” requires us to change the currency from greenbacks into rainbow colors.
When I hear this I think of Topol’s song “Tradition” in the “Fiddler on the Roof.” I understand his frustration and confusion seeing hundreds of years of doing things a certain way falling apart under his feet.
These planned changes seemed designed to do away what America stood for and to make it into something other than what it is. Not that all of our past actions were commendable but we slowly overcame the bad and learned from it developing our unique culture.
A woman in the House of Representatives said: “throughout American history, intelligent, courageous and innovative women have struggled to fight for our rights, to expand opportunity and to build commerce.” That’s true, but they were never in the forefront of that struggle. They had little to no say in creating our country, or the writing our founding documents, and the fighting it took to make us into a nation and preserve our freedoms.
Our everyday currency honors those who led in that fight: Five presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Jackson, Grant, and two patriotic leaders Hamilton and Franklin. On our coins we have Lincoln, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Washington. Do we forget what they did?
I have no problem with a woman on the $10. Mine is with the rewriting of our history. It is knowing how we became what we are that makes us a nation. The way thing are going the four white guys on Mount Rushmore are going to have to move over to let in a crowd of others.
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Nancy Sinatra, mostly because of Frank. Or Abigail Adams not mostly because of John.
Let Weymouth’s Abigail Smith’s portrait encourage more to marry their third cousins, like Quincy/Braintree’s John Adams was to her.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail_Adams
John Adams got land in Merrymount once owned by Anglican [horrors!] Thomas Morton in the deal:
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h576.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrymount_(Quincy,_Massachusetts)
Bruce Jenner on the three dollar bill and Bella Abzug on the fifteen. Leave our founding fathers alone.
One woman who should be on a Federal Reserve Note, although she probably would have hate that, would be the first woman elected to Congress in 1916, Jeanette Rankin of Montana (1880-1973). She was first woman elected to a legislative body in a Western democracy.
A pacifist, she was principled enough to vote against US entry into WWI and be the single vote against the declaration of war against Japan after Pearl Harbor. “As a woman I can’t go to war,” she said, “and I refuse to send anyone else.”
I admire people who can follow their ideals, right or wrong in others’ eyes, no matter where they lead.
Henry:
She was quite a woman. I read and wrote about her a while ago. But she was white and the woman on the $10 must be black.
* Miners’
*Transcendental … ” Transcendal” I have determined, was a very cool freudian slip: transcend/all. Language and Mind … revealing, mysterious, … magical.
I am conservative on many things. I am a ” liberal ” on others. I do not like these political labels anyway for as Soren Kierkegaard aphoristically and airily ( in the Transcendal sense of “airy” :-)) stated : ” When you name me you negate me. ” … I do know the Lower East End of NYC was a milling madness of ethnicities belly to belly at turn of the Twentieth Century. It got worked out. It works itself out. It was always working even when it had no collective awareness of such ; As this is … Lifeb..Ditto for the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek West Virginia coal miner’s strikes in 1912 into ’13 . They were replete with labor wracked miners : Anglo, Black, Irishman, Poles, plutocrat owners, their thug detective hires, evictions by said thugs and families wintering in tents with foxhole floors, shootouts, sniping, OK Corral tor to toes that left six dead Dicks and one minet, a line of railroad cars full of thug detectives and law enforcement that … machine gunned … these miner’s families’ camps one frosty morning as they slowly chugged past; families who had ” mined ” out their foxhole floors anticipating such hard core craziness 🙂 ..And even a Hatfield or two putting in their considerably more than two bits !!! … There has always been deep and colorful conflict in America. So let’s just stay out on Life’s dance floor and Party. None of us is here that long. It works out. It ALL WORKS OUT !!!
Soon our nation will stand for nothing.
Oops, the future has arrived: Our nation stands for nothing.
GOK:
Standing for nothing means anything goes. Not only that only the bigoted will object to anyone doing whatever that person wants to do. Not only will we be required to accept what anyone else does, we will be required to affirm their right to do it. You want to be Suzy today, and Muggsy tomorrow, but go back to becoming Sally but then changing your mind to become Jake that’s what we will be faced with – and why would be object? Yes our future is here – I suppose we should consider adding other colors to the red, white and blue.
Matt you wrote, “…we will be required to affirm their right to do it.”
And, as others on blogs elsewhere have written, “[We] will be made to care.”