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Ask Sam
VM: Oh? Can I see?
US: Are we talking about things or ideas?
VM: Sorry. I’m an antiquarian by profession, so I’ll get sidetracked if you start describing the contents of your pockets. I’d love to know what else you’ve got in there, but another time perhaps. Returning to the subject of tyranny, are you saying there is a danger of it, if we allow the spirit of liberty to become corrupted by selfish interest?
1793 Large Cent
US: Tocqueville said it, and I happen to agree.
VM: Is our democracy strong enough to ward off that threat?
US: I’ll let you be the judge of the health of democracy in America today. It does appear that Liberty, both the goddess and the ideal, has gone out of fashion. You don’t see her on coins anymore. She’s been replaced by presidents.
VM: What does that imply, do you think, about the ideal of liberty? Her absence on our coinage.
US: You recall what I said about anarchy leading to tyranny.
VM: Do the presidents represent tyranny?
US: Not overtly, but in the early days of the republic, anyone who had the temerity to suggest putting a president on a coin would have been called a monarchist, or worse.
VM: Even Washington? Even Lincoln?
US: Washington turned in his grave when his face first appeared on legal tender. Lincoln would have rather seen a monument to Liberty than to himself any day.
VM: Well, we do at least have the Statue of Liberty.
US: A gift from…
VM: France! The mother country! Liberté, égalité, fraternité!
US: Another fine motto. The French, lacking a word for freedom, did their best with what they had. Equality coupled with fraternity comes close to describing the original meaning of freedom. Liberty, which could be represented as a voluptuous goddess, has always been more accessible to the French mind, however, from the days of Rousseau and Voltaire.
VM: Yet, things didn’t turn out so well in France, did they? Our democracy has survived, or at least our system has, while the French Revolution only paved the way for Napoleon, and they didn’t get their act together until well into the last century.
US: Their revolution was fought on an entirely different basis, and for different ideals than ours, and they had a long history of anti-democratic habitudes and customs to purge from their society, whereas we started more or less with a clean slate in the New World, thanks to the good fortune bestowed on us by Providence.
VM: We’ve been very fortunate. Let’s hope we remain a beacon of democracy for all the world for centuries to come.
US: If we remember what it means to be Americans, together, as one, we certainly shall.
VM: Maybe Liberty, the goddess I mean, is due for a comeback. Perhaps making her our new figurehead here at Legacy Americana will help inspire a renewed appreciation of her virtues…a new birth of liberty!
US: I hope it does, I hope she will.
VM: It’s been great chatting with you, Sam. Okay if we call you that?
US: Just don’t call me Yankee Doodle.
NOTES
1. Democracy in America. Vol. I, Chap. XVII.
2. Ibid. Vol. II, Book 4, Chap. II.
Recommended reading…
Hackett, David Fischer. Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America’s Founding Ideas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
A lavishly illustrated and incisively written guide to American political iconography. —VM
And of course, no political education is complete without a careful reading of Tocqueville.
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