Change For a Ten

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew's announcement that the Treasury Department is planning to take Alexander Hamilton's image off the $10 bill and replace him with an as-yet-unnamed woman falls right in line with the direction our entire country has been headed in lately --- the war on white guys. Please understand what's going on here.

They admit that they don't have any one particular woman in mind yet, but that doesn't matter. The important thing is that a dead white Founding Father will be taken off the bill and replaced by a woman, any woman.

You see, it doesn't matter who she is or what she accomplished as long as it's a woman's face on the ten dollar bill (preferably a woman of color and definitely a Leftist). Flip a coin, take your pick. There are plenty political activist, progressive females to choose from.

Super liberal Rolling Stone Magazine listed their ten favorites recently which includes: the first black woman elected to Congress, Shirley Chisholm; Inez Milholland, an advocate for prisoner human rights; Latina union organizer Dolores Huerta; and of course universal women's suffrage advocate and Underground Railroad conductor, Harriet Tubman.

Also included in the Rolling Stone list is Christine Jorgensen, the "first widely documented person to undergo gender-reassignment" as they call it. (We used to call it a sex change operation.) But should Jorgensen qualify for the nomination since he/she started out as a man? Hmmm. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Founding Father portraits on our money is so yesterday. After all, what did Alexander Hamilton ever do to deserve his place on the ten? Okay, so he was the guy who actually made our money to begin with. He founded the New York Evening Post (still going strong as a daily paper). His wrote a series of 85 opinion pieces, written in 1787-88, under the pseudonym Publius to support the ratification of the Constitution. Hamilton conceived the series, tapped John Jay and James Madison as collaborators, and wrote three-fifths of the essays himself. College students and justices of the Supreme Court still read and cite the Federalist Papers.

Hamilton was a brilliant attorney, a valued and loyal aide to George Washington during the revolution and his adviser on numerous issues throughout his presidency. Hamilton even ghosted Washington's famous farewell address after serving two terms as president. As the nation's first Secretary of the Treasury he saved the new country from its first debt crisis and laid the foundations for its future prosperity. He established what was then a very new idea in the world, a central bank, the Bank of the United States, to handle the federal government's assets.

Hamilton's central bank would also act as a private bank, selling stock to investors and making loans to ordinary customers. He saw it as a way of both increasing and regulating the money supply --- so necessary to a cash-poor economy after the Revolutionary War. Hamilton argued that a bank was necessary to fulfill a function mentioned in the Constitution --- borrowing money on the credit of the United States --- therefore it was an implied power. President Washington and Congress agreed.

Alexander Hamilton's accomplishments could fill a book, and as a matter of fact they have filled several books throughout our country's history, one of the best written in 2004 by Ron Chernow.

But none of this has any relevance to today's Americans. Sadly, historical truth has no place in our society anymore. What's much more important is to elevate women and other so-called suppressed groups regardless of accomplishment or historical accuracy while at the same time denigrating and downplaying the role of white men, in particular the evil white founders of our country.

Political correct inclusion of women trumps Founding Father accomplishments every time. The portrait change on the $10 bill is scheduled to be made in 2020, and guess what? That gives Hillary Clinton plenty of time to become the first woman president, which would definitely put her at the head of the line for the $10 spot. What a coincidence!

Actually, if Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes president she would make the perfect choice to replace Hamilton. What could be a better exemplar of our times then a woman who accomplished nothing replacing a man who instituted the entire financial underpinnings of our nation? If being a woman is enough to elect her president, it should be more than enough to get her on the $10 bill. (Or maybe on ALL of our bills and coins, like the Queen of England.) Wait and see.

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JWR contributor Greg Crosby, former creative head for Walt Disney publications, has written thousands of comics, hundreds of children's books, dozens of essays, and a letter to his congressman. He's also a Southern California-based freelance writer.