Patrick J. Buchanan is an historian.  In his piece, “Dishonoring General Jackson”, Buchanan conjures up facts.  That is what historians do.  Regarding the recent proposal to put new faces on our currency, and noticing a very certain attitude,

“..this is affirmative action raised to fanaticism, a celebration of President Obama’s views and values, and a recasting of our currency..”

I heard a conservative radio host dismiss the currency reconfiguration issue as a non event.  His argument was that there were more important issues to concern ourselves with, the national debt, illegal immigration, etc..  I maintain that we can hold concern for many things at the same time, and that this currency remake is indeed one that should hold our attention.  Pat Buchanan agrees.

Image control is no small issue, and politicians and revolutionaries know it.  To reface the currency is to shuffle the deck on historical hierarchies, or should I say “load” the deck.  It is a rewrite of history, a new declaration of what is and was important.  That is no small matter.

Buchanan writes:

“…. replacing Jackson with Tubman is not the only change coming.

The back of the $5 bill will soon feature Martin Luther King, Eleanor Roosevelt, and opera singer Marian Anderson, who performed at the Lincoln Memorial after being kept out of segregated Constitution Hall in 1939…

But Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sojourner Truth, who fought for women’s suffrage, will be put on the back of the $10. While Anthony and Stanton appear in Morison’s history, Sojourner Truth does not…

Added up, while dishonoring Andrew Jackson, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is putting on the U.S. currency six women — three white, three African-American — and King…

Our first black President has an agenda, it appears.  His close confidants Susan Rice, Valerie Jarret, Michelle Obama, and Loretta Lynch must be elated.  This smacks of some sort of Obama “payback”.  There is almost a suggestion of anger, a “take that!” message as he finishes his final months. Finger up.

No Catholics, no conservatives, no Hispanics, no white males were apparently even considered…

Remarkable is the process for approving such drastic alteration to the currency.  Who authored the recommendations and who has authoritative approval?  Buchanan continues:

This is affirmative action raised to fanaticism, a celebration of President Obama’s views and values, and a recasting of our currency to make Obama’s constituents happy at the expense of America’s greatest heroes and historic truth…

While King already has a holiday and monument in D.C., were the achievements of any of these six women remotely comparable to what the six men honored on our currency — Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Jackson, President Grant and Ben Franklin — achieved?

I find it curious that we get the forced and reworked American history lesson from a man who was never tutored in history in the continental United States, and received none from his schooling in Indonesia.  Buchanan concludes:

In the dystopian novel, “1984,” Winston Smith labors in the Ministry of Truth, dropping down the “memory hole” stories that must be rewritten to re-indoctrinate the party and proles in the new history, as determined by Big Brother. Jack Lew would have fit right in there.”

This is one of the many “finger up” episodes we can expect from this President, on his way out the door, to an America he seems to dislike.