Sunday, February 6, 2011
Sunday Question for Conservatives
Here's one for the Ronald Reagan centennial. There's a lot of talk about putting Reagan on a coin or on currency. My sense of it is that Reagan should clearly be behind at least three people who we currently don't honor that way: James Madison, who is extraordinarily under-memorialized; Harry Truman, who is generally rated higher than Reagan by most scholars, and Martin Luther King Jr., who is in the odd position of being one of a very small group of Americans honored with a national holiday but not featured on American money. Do you indeed believe Reagan should be ahead of those three? Who would you bump to make room for him?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Teddy Roosevelt's first appearance on regularly circulating currency was when Mt. Rushmore was featured on South Dakota's state quarter. He belongs ahead of Reagan too.
ReplyDeleteI think this ends up getting into a question of who is already over memorialized. And yeah, I know, my fellow liberals will say Reagan, and they have a point, but I feel like we can talk about someone else.
ReplyDeleteI have trouble answering that question, though; I might say TR because I feel like his accomplishments didn't quite live up to his rhetoric...but his rhetoric really WAS something, and changing the political discourse in the country (as I feel he did) really is something. I might also say Jefferson, especially as his actions ran counter to some of his statements, but...man, the Louisiana Purchase.
So I dunno why I fall on my sub question. And I'm not qualified to answer the big question, so...
...so this post really petered out.