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IPFS News Link • American History

My Two-Bit Political Awakening

• https://www.lewrockwell.com by James Bovard

But for young kids, collecting coins is a less pernicious pastime than becoming a pyromaniac or Tik-Tok star. My own experience collecting, buying, and selling coins vaccinated me against trusting politicians long before I grew my first scruffy beard.

The thrill of coin collecting

Handling old coins was like shaking hands with the pioneers who built this country. I wondered if the dented 1853 quarter I purchased was ever involved in Huckleberry Finn–type adventures when "two bits" bought a zesty time. My grandfather gave me a battered copper two-cent piece from 1864, the same year that Union General Phil Sheridan burned down the Shenandoah Valley, where I was raised. Some of the coins I collected might now be banned as hate symbols, such as Buffalo nickels with an Indian portrait engraved on the front.

I was enthralled by early American coin designs, especially those featuring idealized female images emblazoned with the word liberty. I was unaware that George Washington refused to allow his own image on the nation's coins because it would be too "monarchical." Until 1909, there was an unwritten law that no portrait appear on any American coin in circulation. That changed with the 100th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, whom the Republican Party found profitable to canonize on pennies.

By the mid-20th century, American coinage had degenerated into paeans to dead politicians. Portraits of Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Dwight Eisenhower were slapped onto coins almost as soon as their pulses stopped. This reflected a sea change in values as Americans were encouraged to expect more from their leaders than from their own freedom.


www.universityofreason.com/a/29887/KWADzukm