-By Warner Todd Huston
The recent issuing of a new U.S. coin featuring Lady Liberty depicted as a black woman has been poisoned by liberalism and PCism.
The coin being released by the U.S. Mint this year is a 24-Karat gold coin worth $100 and is to be unveiled to mark the U.S. Mint and Treasury’s 225th anniversary (The Mint was founded in 1792).
The new coin has a beautiful black woman with braided hair, wearing a crown of large, five-pointed stars. The figure’s upper bodice is a classic draped-style dress with a broach clip at the shoulder. Over the bust is the word “Liberty,” beneath is “In God We Trust,” and the coin’s edge is marked “225th Anniversary” bookended by a star on each side. It is a bold, but tasteful design.
I want to say straight out that this coin is totally fantastic. There is NOTHING at all wrong with depicting Lady Liberty as a black woman. And if you think there is because of your distaste for PCism, you need to rethink your opposition and change your mind immediately.
Sadly, all too many are denouncing the release of this new coin as just another craven act of liberalism or just another example of politically correct nonsense. Worse, thanks to our failed educational system so thoroughly destroyed by liberals, many more are attacking it as making a race-based alteration to the “Statue of Liberty.”
Let’s take this misinformed “Statue of Liberty” claim, first, shall we?
This new coin is a racial take on the long time American tradition of “Lady Liberty,” to be sure. But it has precisely nothing to do with the Statue of Liberty.
When we started this country the founders understood that Britain and Europe each had their own female matriarchs as symbols for their people. England had Britannia and Europe had Europa. But America, being a newly created entity, had no such figurehead to represent her. So, the founders figured that a suitable creature was needed to represent America.
Hence, the founders created Lady Liberty as the beau ideal for our creed. Liberty is also a figure in classic Greek mythology, though certainly a lesser-known Greek goddess. But our founders took the myth and retooled it for the needs of our new nation and our new ethos.
In the U.S. Lady Liberty was often depicted as holding a shied and spear or a flag, wore five-pointed stars on her clothing, and often wore a “liberty cap” on her head. Also, it was typical to have one breast fully exposed to signify motherhood and fertility. Lady Liberty was born in the fires of the American Revolution and has been a fixture of our national mythology since the beginning of our national identity.
It was this symbol that the Statue of Liberty was modeled after – not the other way around. In other words, the great statue in New York given to us by France in 1886 came over one hundred years AFTER the creation of Lady Liberty as used America’s female or goddess symbol.
So, no, this new coin is not some bastardization of the Statue of Liberty. It is a new treatment of the symbol that came over a century before the Statue of Liberty was even conceived.
Now, while it is admittedly a nominal effort at PCism, we can also dispense with this notion that the coin should be illegitimized merely because of PCism.
You see, Lady Liberty is an ideal representing, well, LIBERTY! The truth is, there is no reason whatever that Lady Liberty can’t be represented as a black person, an Asian person, or a white person. In fact, we should encourage all races in the U.S., all freedom-loving peoples in the country, to adopt Lady Liberty for their own.
Our American ideals are for everyone. A black Lady Liberty is perfectly acceptable and should be encouraged.
But because modern, left-wing liberalism corrupts and sullies everything it touches, for far too many their first inclination is to reject this new coin and pronounce it just another effort of the left to undermine our history and our principles.
But it is not.
I urge you, my fellow Americans, to accept this black Lady Liberty as an expression of freedom for all. It is just as legitimate as any depiction of Lady Liberty as a generic white woman.
Liberty has no race, folks. We must remember that.
While there is plenty about PCism to reject, this coin is not one.
America, don’t let liberals sully liberty. Don’t let the left poison and destroy our dedication to liberty.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as Constitution.com, CanadaFreePress.com, BizPac Review, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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