Posted on 04/02/2008 7:42:28 PM PDT by Richard Poe
| by Richard Lawrence Poe Wednesday, April 2, 2008 |
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HAVE YOU seen the new five-dollar bill? It looks like someone spilled grape juice on it. A violet stain obscures Abraham Lincoln's face. On the back, an oversized numeral five appears in purple. Enough is enough. We must stop the desecration of our currency.
The U.S. Treasury's Bureau of Engraving and Printing claims it is making our banknotes "safer, smarter and more secure". They say the violet stain on Lincoln's face adds "complexity", rendering counterfeiting more difficult. The big purple five on the back supposedly helps vision-impaired people count their change.
Hogwash! These goals could be achieved through less drastic means. There is no need to turn our banknotes into Monopoly money.
U.S. currency already features watermarks, microprinting, embedded fluorescent security threads, color-shifting ink and fine-line printing patterns -- subtle security measures requiring little change in the dollar's design. For the visually impaired, high-contrast features could be added in a tasteful manner, without resorting to garish, phosphorescent hues.
The fact is, we are being hoodwinked. The redesign of our currency has nothing to do with fighting counterfeiters or helping people with weak eyesight. It has everything to do with catering to the perverse canons of postmodernist art. The U.S. Treasury has allowed a cabal of avant-garde designers to pull off one of the most audacious practical jokes in art history; the "subversion" and "deconstruction" of the U.S. dollar. We the taxpayers must demand an end to this cultural vandalism.
More than 2,300 years ago, Aristotle opined that art should be wondrous and beautiful. It should instruct and elevate the masses, he said, giving pleasure and catharsis or emotional release.
Today's hipster intellectuals reject Aristotle. Instead, they embrace a philosophy called "poststructuralism", "postmodernism" or just plain PoMo. For PoMo's apostles, art is a weapon of revolution. Its purpose is to mock, degrade and undermine the cherished beliefs of Western civilization. PoMo theorists call this process "deconstruction" or "subversion".
Photographer Andres Serrano famously deconstructed Christianity in 1989 by snapping a picture of a crucifix submerged in Serrano's own urine. In 1999, the Brooklyn Museum showcased an image of the Virgin Mary which artist Chris Ofili had splattered with elephant dung.
Meanwhile PoMo designers have been doing to national currencies what Serrano and Ofili did to Christianity. Their first target was the Dutch guilder.
From 1964 to 1985, graphic artist Ootje Oxenaar redesigned the entire series of Dutch guilder notes on commission from the Nederlandsche Bank. Oxenaar began the project by studying banknotes from many countries. He found them all "very muddy in color". Oxenaar later told the PBS series Nova:
"The only banknotes that really inspired me, in fact, was play money, like the Monopoly money, and that is what I think is necessary for banknotes too."Accordingly, Oxenaar designed the new guilders to look like play money. He sprang other tricks on the Dutch taxpayer as well. Oxenaar told a British design magazine:
"On the 1000 guilder note, it became a sport for me to put things in the notes that nobody wanted there. I was very proud to have my fingerprint in this note - and it's my middle finger!"The 100-guilder note formerly portrayed Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, a Dutch national hero who defeated French and British fleets in the 17th century. Oxenaar replaced Admiral de Ruyter with an image of a long-billed wading bird common in the Netherlands. "I changed our war criminal -- the grand admiral -- to a snipe", he later quipped.
Oxenaar's radical approach met resistance at first. But over time, he recalls, "there developed a circle of friends who believed in it... a circle of believers." Our new five-dollar bill suggests that some U.S. Treasury designers may have joined Oxenaar's circle.
For 67 years, no major design changes affronted the dollar's dignity. Then the transformation began. The $100 bill was redesigned in 1996; the $50 in 1997 and 2004; the $20 in 1998 and 2003; the $10 in 2000 and 2006; and the $5 in 2000 and 2008. With each mutation, our magnificent greenbacks have been devolving, by slow but steady increments, into play money.
The $100 bill is now undergoing its second redesign in 12 years. U.S. Treasurer Anna Escobedo Cabral recently told a group of grade-school students, "The bill is still a secret, and I can't tell you what it looks like. It will be very colorful, though!"
Since we taxpayers are footing the bill, secrecy seems inappropriate. The U.S. Treasury needs to tell us now where these redesigns are heading.
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Richard Lawrence Poe is a contributing editor to Newsmax, an award-winning journalist and a New York Times bestselling author. His latest book is The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Siezed Control of the Democratic Party, co-written with David Horowitz. |
Bwahahahahaha!
Do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake? Children’s ice cream!...You know when fluoridation began?...1946. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core Commie works. I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love...Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women...women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake...but I do deny them my essence.
No. But I want them to be as hard as possible to counterfeit. As it stands right now, North Korea and Iran (among others) are counterfeiting US money to prop up their economies and hurt us.
Personally, I think that is an act of war, and should be dealt with the appropriate fashion, but, until then, we need to make currency as difficult as possible to counterfeit.
Actually, the U.S. government did not begin printing its own banknotes until 1862. Before that, only banks printed banknotes.
I'd estimate about .65 cents.
I just started pumping gas the other day, and sneezed...By the time I looked up, I was past 5 bucks.
I’m all for livening up the greenbacks. All color is cool. Blue, red, yellow, orange and purple The $100 bill should be a combination of the colors used on the $1 bill thru the $50 bill. Live a little.
Very nice ... was the coloring part of the original? It’s very similar to the graded color in some of our “new” bills.
Uh, a fiver does buy more than all that.
It does?
Might I ask where you're purchasing your gas, milk and cigarettes? If you have the address, please provide that too.
The main difference between me and a government design committee is that I recognize that I have limited design ability...
Color is not the problem. I love colorful money, when it is done right.
The problem is that we should not entrust the redesign of our national currency to artists imbued with postmodernist ideology. Their goal is to degrade the dollar, not glorify it. Sooner or later, their malice will work itself into their designs.
It is a question of motivation.
First they came for the twenties...
...and I didn’t say anything because I didn’t have any twenties...
I agree with Poe Richard’s comments. The designs and some of the colors are ugly, and have little to do with anti-counterfeiting tactics. If you like the designs provide another reason...
I use my debit card for nearly all purchases. Cash is so - last century. ;)
LOL — I have to admit it.
The main difference between one bunch of folks who think they are inadequate and another bunch (or an individual in this case) is simply that one bunch gets paid to come up with a decision OR ELSE.
You have absolutely no obligation to decide one way or the other.
Plus, anyone can be an editor.
I buy virtually everything with a credit card.
My debit card nicks me for a transaction fee at every turn.
My credit card gives me miles with every charge.
As long as I pay off my card in full every month, I’m going for the miles!
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