The day I read that Ronald Reagan's crony's wanted to take Alexander Hamilton's likeness off the US $10 bill and replace it with the Ronnie's mug, I nearly put my fist through a wall. Reagan, a two term US president of dubious reputation who oversaw the US through one of the largest peace time military build-ups in history and record deficit spending that has since fiscally crippled this nation is a dud when compared to Hamilton who counts among his acomplishments: aide-de-camp to George Washington in the Revolutionary Army, primary author of the Federalist Papers, an instrumental force in the authoriship and ratification of the US Constitution, first US Secretary of the Treasury, and father of the economic system employed in the US to this day. A modern comparison might be if you took Robert Kennedy, Collin Powell, and Alan Greenspan and rolled them into one person and put them at a critial juncture in the history of our country you might get someone approaching what Alexander Hamiton was.
Frankly as far as I'm concerned Ronnie's friends can name all the airports and federal buildings they want after him. (I take an ironic glee in seeing airports named after a man that cut funding to the FAA and broke the Air Traffic Controller's union.) But until Ronnie get's his seven foot tall statue in the US Capital with the other fathers of our nation (like Hamilton) it's absolutely rediculous to consider having him replace such an esteemed founder of the United States on our currency. Especially when the ten dollar bill is such a fitting place to honor Hamilton as among all of his other acomplishments the one who originated the idea of a Federal Reserve Bank to standarize and stabalize the national currency.
Learning more about Hamilton might help you understand why he should stay on the $10 bill. Here are some very good web sites about Hamilton:
These web sites are useful in that they talk about Hamilton's faults as well as his greatness. I think it is important to realize that the governement of the United States is the result of a great colaborative work. Hamilton in many respects represented one extreme among the founding fathers, but he was also a pragmatist and worked to a compromise that has worked for the last 200+ years. Hamilton was not a perfect man (Noah Webster once called him "the evil geniius of the country") but I still find him a far greater man than Reagan; less known to contemporary Americans, but having a far greater impact on their lives.
I find my own political philosophy to be derived from the competing ideas of both Hamilton and his better know friend Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was ever the champion of the rights of the individual contered by Hamilton's passion for the cedeing of power central authority for the common good. Together these competing ideas forged the United States of America.
What can you do about this? Write your congressman or senator to let them know what you think about keeping Hamilton on the $10 bill. Senator Mitch McConnell from Tennessee is one of the cheif proponents to replace Hamilton with Reagan so a letter to him would probably be effective as well. It would really be a shame if this change got made without a real debate about what it would mean to replace a truly important figure in the birth of the United States with a contemporary president.