Oh put your purse down Nancy ...

I write 2 posts in response. The first you described as "good", the second leaves you wanting to take your ball and go home. Look, when I was writing in the first post, employing phrases like "those who would disagree", etc I assumed you would carry my general "to whom it may concern" direction in my argument into the second post. When I was directing fire at you I clearly stated your name - and the reason I went into 4th gear rant mode about your wanting to take Jackson off the $20 bill was due to the following line of yours:

"If there is no defense [of Jackson], then perhaps we do need to review which five Presidents grave the face of our national currency. After all, we have 43 faces we can choose from, and there are far better candidates than Andrew Jackson, I am sure, among them."

"I am sure" you wrote. "I am sure there are far better candidates." I took that as an avocation of his image removal from our currency. I don't think you're a wacko, liberal, politically correct whatever. I used to (once a mutual feeling regarding myslef & the right, I'm sure), I'll cop to that, but not in quite a while.

By the way ... Bill Clinton on the money? Close as he'll come to that is slipping it into a strippers G string. And the reason is precisely what makes that line funny. I think Jambo described Jackson accurately: "A giant in American history and politics." Only our giants get on the currency.

Now once and for all, my position is that regarding our historical figures, those whom are regarded in good standing (enough to grace our currency anyway), legendary, bigger than life, etc - acknowledging their faults and flaws, as measured by today's standards, is worthy of academic pursuit & philosophical inquiry, on an advanced level. I do not think such points of reasoning (my opinion) should be imparted on school children (teach the Indian Removal Act, I mean this point of debate - the general vs Jackson question); or inscribed on statues; or part of the common conscious regarding the giants of our history (in other words at the name Washington I don't want my son's first, or second, thought to be"slave owner"). Otherwise the proper historical perspective will never be achieved. If you start out pointing at a big, gaping, pulsating zit the young student may find it hard to ever look at the entire face.That's all I'm saying. And any real move to take Jackson, et al, off the currency would surely be a step towards that, and as I stated, a reparation of sorts.

There are Indians that protest the Columbus Day Parade in New York every year. They yell epitaphs, things like "war criminal", and hang an effigy of the explorer. Many Italians take offense to this, as Columbus is an ethnic hero. And whom among us didn't learn the quaint little poem: "In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue." My point is if one wants to discuss the treatment towards Native Americans suffered at the hands of ol' Chrissy C., fine. But it shouldn't be at the expense of the smiling faces in that parade, especially the children ... just my opinion.