The
Reagan Penny
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
With the death of Ronald Reagan, the conservative right wing has reached a
critical moment in hoping to push its hero into the Hall of American Deity
along with Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. In the main, this is an
effort on the part of the conservative right wing to justify itself and
its religion-based beliefs and policies via self-deification. This has
been going on for a long time.
Over the past half decade, the Visitor Center at Mount Rushmore has
provided "voting booths" where tourists can "vote" for
their favorite presidents from among all 43 of them. In these
"unscientific" polls, Ronald Reagan is typically among the top
four contenders and there are regular suggestions at the Shrine of
Democracy that the National Park Service carve the likeness of Ronald
Reagan into the granite cliffs of Mount Rushmore.
Fortunately, that is not possible because most of Mount Rushmore is lying
in the talus pile beneath the presidential faces. Roosevelt's image, for
example, is back-supported by only a dozen or so feet of granite. There is
just no safe place to carve another image on what is left of Mount
Rushmore.
There is also the megalomaniacal problem of equating the contributions of
Ronald Reagan with those of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. Jimmy
Breslin sees this akin to "claiming that the maintenance man wrote
the Bill of Rights." As for Reagan being credited with ending the
Cold War, "just saying this is absolutely sinful" (Reagan should
be on a $3 bill, Newsday, June 12, 2004).
With Mount Rushmore out of the discussion, the death of Ronald Reagan has
indeed brought forth requests to carve Reagan's image on U.S. coinage.
Franklin D. Roosevelt on the dime, Jefferson on the nickel and Lincoln on
the penny have all been placed in potential danger by Reagan deifiers.
Of those options, it seems most appropriate to carve Reagan's image on the
Lincoln penny. After all, a penny is virtually worthless in America and
that characteristic is far more applicable to Reagan than to Lincoln.
Reagan supported "states rights" (as long as the states wanted
what Reagan's conservative right wing government wanted), and the current
Bush economy would restrict the Reagan penny largely to paying State sales
taxes and thusly empowering States.
At the same time, the loss of Lincoln to the likeness of Ronald Reagan
would be devastating to those who know enough about Lincoln to admire
deity. Lincoln's personal views on economics leave little room for
"Reaganomics" and no room at all for religious capitalism and
"Bushonomics." In Lincoln's mind, "Labor is prior to, and
independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could
never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior
of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
Reagan gave us "trickle-down" economics in nourishing the
corporate quest for political dominion. In fact, the American people have
been warned about precisely this outcome from the beginning, by Jefferson,
Franklin, Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eisenhower. More than anyone,
by his disingenuous pandering to the religious right wing, Reagan set the
stage for the emergence of the current Bush administration, religious
self-righteousness in American domestic and foreign policy, and the
discrediting of American morality and purpose in the eyes of the world.
The mere fact that the conservative right wing would propose the notion of
replacing Lincoln with Reagan is compelling evidence of the devolution of
Jeffersonian democracy right back to the religious capitalism (aka British
mercantilism) that stifled the Colonies and prompted the American
Revolution. Reagan's achievements were not only miniscule compared to
Lincoln's but were entirely off in the wrong direction, away from human
rights and fairness and equality.
It was Reagan's election more than anything that threatened core American
values and principles, beginning with the separation of church and state.
Rather than denigrate and cheapen America's founding fathers, the people
might consider listening to my 87 year old Republican father. He was a
Republican when I first met him and proud of being a Robert LaFollette
progressive. With the emergence of the Bush regime, my father not only
dropped out of the Republican party but became vociferously against it.
Actually, the old man jumped ship to vote for John F. Kennedy way back in
1960.
I don't know if my father loves honesty or hates dishonesty, or is that
the same thing?
It strikes me that they are not the same thing at all. To choose honesty
is an act of human wisdom, to oppose dishonesty is a human duty.
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Dr. Gerry Lower lives in the shadow of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills
of South Dakota. He has a book on Jefferson, a website at
www.jeffersonseyes.com and he can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com.
