04/19/2015
Rosa Parks to replace the Hero of New Orleans on the currency?
“It’s time” — for a woman on American currency, and why not? America is no longer a nation of heroes, but a collection of victims. Now even the currency of the Affirmative Action Nation is catching up with the reality that today’s hollow empire is nothing the Founding Fathers would recognize.
A campaign to put a woman, any woman, on the $20 bill received new traction when Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) filed legislation for a “citizen’s panel” to recommend a replacement for the current bill’s celebration of President Andrew Jackson. In Shaheen’s words,
"I think there are a lot of opportunities that we sometimes don’t think about to point out the significant contributions women have made in U.S. history," Shaheen said. "And this is one of those opportunities."[US senator says it’s time to put a woman on the $20 bill, by Holly Ramer, Associated Press, April 17, 2015]
Shaheen narrowly (51.46%-48.21%) defeated Republican Scott Brown in 2014’s most important Senate election, using a hysterical campaign that painted Brown (who is pro-choice) as an anti-woman fanatic who wanted to restrict abortion. Brown was abused as an “aggressive misogynist” because he jokingly suggested no one wants to see Elizabeth Warren in a bikini. Shaheen also benefited from an estimated $1 million dollars’ worth of anti-Brown attack ads from Mark Zuckerberg’s pro-Amnesty lobbying group, FWD.us.
This alliance between big money and Political Correctness defines our modern politics and it’s also the stated rationale behind the campaign by Democrats to disown one of the greatest Presidents ever produced by their own party.
According to the “Women On 20s” website, Jackson was responsible for Indian removal and opening up the West to “white European settlers,” which is “not okay.”
Interestingly though, the group also opposes Jackson because “some argue that because Jackson was a fierce opponent of the central banking system and favored gold and silver coin or "hard money" over paper currency, he is an ironic choice for immortalization on our money.” [Why the $20, WomenOn20s]. Paleolibertarians (if there were any left) could point out how a devalued currency is swiftly followed by devalued heroes. But unfortunately most of today’s libertarians are likely to be leading the charge against the hated “dead white males.”
So who is to be on the $20? Well, as you might expect, that doesn’t matter. Just as we are supposed to crown Hillary Clinton President because “it’s time” for a woman President, a woman on the $20 is necessary because “it’s high time we honored women’s accomplishments on currency and there are plenty of women to choose from.” And besides, as feminist Jessica Valenti has written, it means “one less man in my wallet” [The fight to put a woman on the $20 bill would be worth the backlash, The Guardian, April 17, 2015]
Initially, the activist group promoting this issue had created 15 possible choices. One of the most interesting: Barbara Jordan, an African-American lesbian who, among other demographic “firsts,” was the first black woman to deliver the keynote address to the Democratic National Convention. However, her chief interest to VDARE.com readers: she also chaired the 1994 Jordan Commission on illegal immigration which called for greater efforts to deter unlawful immigration and cutbacks on legal immigration.
As Jordan put it:
“People who should get it in, get in; people who should not enter are kept out; and people who are deportable should be required to leave.”
It seems like another age, but it wasn’t that long ago when Democratic politicians like Harry Reid could campaign against mass immigration (legal and illegal) on the obviously true grounds that “no sane nation” — Reid’s words — would indulge such obviously suicidal practices as “birthright citizenship” and awarding welfare benefits to everyone who could make it across the border. Jordan’s immigration patriotism was actually quite typical of many Democrats of that time period.
Jordan’s value to the “Women On 20s” campaign was not because of anything she actually did or said, but because of her skin color, sex, and (presumably) sexual orientation. Just as Cesar Chavez has been retconned from an anti-immigration labor organizer into an Open Borders crusader for La Raza, the actual content of Jordan’s beliefs and accomplishments have been subordinated to the current political imperative of sticking it to the white man.
Another proposal: Planned Parenthood progenitor Margaret Sanger. Here again, the value of Sanger to the $20 campaign was her advocacy of abortion — not the actual rationale of why she supported abortion, which was, to put it mildly, Politically Incorrect.
But neither Jordan nor Sanger made the final cut. The four candidates to replace Jackson on the $20 bill:
Roosevelt, like future President Hillary Clinton, is important chiefly because she married a powerful man and overlooked his infidelities. Her naïve (at best) globalism aside, her domestic policies would today be regarded as retrograde or perhaps even offensive because her old-fashioned liberalism would have little room for critical theory.
Rosa Parks, far from being the “tired old lady” of public school mythology, was a Leftist activist who served as the front person for a radical political agenda. The substantive results of this agenda can be seen in the shattered ruins of once-proud American cities like Birmingham, Selma, or Parks’ native Montgomery, where the Southern Poverty Law Center, housed in the notorious “Poverty Palace,” is one of the few thriving businesses. Parks herself moved to Detroit, another destroyed city — where she herself would eventually be robbed and beaten by a black man [Rosa Parks robbed and beaten, New York Times, August 30, 1994].
Like most people, you are probably wondering, “Who the heck is Wilma Mankiller?” Although she was no doubt really nominated because of her last name, Mankiller was the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation. Like most great minority leaders, she was half-white. Aside from creating some “programs” and being a woman, she was chiefly noted for expelling the black “Cherokee freedmen” from the tribe because they lacked Indian blood. [The Cherokee nation must be free to expel black freedmen, by James MacKay, The Guardian, September 17, 2011]
Harriet Tubman was an escaped slave who guided other blacks north on the Underground Railroad. She was also an enthusiastic conspirator with John Brown, who referred to her as “General Tubman,” assisted in his plot to raid and murder Southern families, and referred to him as a martyr after his execution. [Harriet Tubman, Biography, Accessed April 19, 2015]
The common thread is that all these figures’ accomplishments (in the cases where there are actual accomplishments) were all targeted towards deconstructing and dispossessing the historic American nation from the country it created. Andrew Jackson’s life was directed towards increasing the power, importance, and wealth of his country. The life of these women was chiefly directed towards redistributing the wealth and resources other people created and convincing others to fight their battles for them.
Will we see Jackson removed? Almost certainly. Like President James Polk, Andrew Jackson represents the spirit of a self-aware and proud American nation willing to act in its own defense. It’s hard to imagine anything more opposed what the post-American polity is becoming today — a boarding house of mutually-hostile tribes appeased by a Leviathan government endlessly confiscating the wealth created by whites and giving it to nonwhites.
The use of “It’s time” implies that the great days of creation and conquest for the United States are over. All that is left is to divvy up the spoils and disown the legacy created by our now-delegitimized white forebears. No one creates or does anything new, they simply give away what others did.
Cultural Marxism is pushing on an open door. Even the most inane schemes of a Left wing activist groups are quickly elevated to the level of policy. And there are no limits to this process — unless and until the historic American nation is able to create a political force willing to act in its own defense.
But I don’t think Obama will sign the bill replacing Jackson. They’ll leave it for President Hillary Clinton.
After all, it’s “her time.” James Kirkpatrick is a Beltway veteran and a refugee from Conservatism Inc.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.