Peter Michaelson: The Disappearance of a Great Lady

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Peter Michaelson

Now that she's gone, it's a battle between the Christian cross and the Nike swoosh to replace her as the national symbol of our beliefs and values. We took her for granted, no doubt, but she was always there, in the palm of our hands, the very image of our unspoken, sometimes even unconscious, communion with the ideals and destiny of America.

Lady Liberty was Miss America, our first beauty queen, the dream girl of our aspirations and the transcendent symbol of our better nature. Even when we didn't know it, we were partaking of her nobility. Subliminally, we absorbed from her sovereignty the sense of our own. To our good fortune her image was stamped in the hundreds of millions -- on pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, half-dollars, and dollars, as well as on gold coins -- and shipped off countrywide from U.S. Mints in Philadelphia, Denver, Carson City, New Orleans, and San Francisco.

The authorities stopped minting our Lady of Liberty when the Liberty Walking Half-Dollar ended its 1916 to 1947 run. Some would say that we have since lost our connection to the precious values that shone through to us from her beauty and symbolism.

As we know, symbols are subliminal advertisements for beliefs and values. Mythologist Joseph Campbell observed that every great culture grew out of a mythic base that had expressive rituals and potent symbols. These enabled a society, he said, to affirm life and to ensure that certain values are passed on to future generations. The novelist D.H. Lawrence wrote that the power of the symbol "is to arouse the deep emotional self, and the dynamic self beyond comprehension."

In the Lady's absence, both the Christian cross and the Nike swoosh are filling a vacuum in the American psyche. The cross has many emotional connotations, which also vary according to the context in which we see it. Because of the way Christianity is being thrust into public life, many of us are beginning to experience the cross as a symbol of political partisanship and militarism. Meanwhile, the swoosh, worn it seems by half the athletes on TV, seems to symbolize the triumph of marketing, commercialism, and globalization over the spirit of the people.

Another icon, the Statue of Liberty, doesn't daily cross our path, and it, too, has taken on emotional associations, mainly concerning differences on immigration policy and the desirability of an open society. We also have the Stars and Stripes, of course, but its symbolism has been tainted by nationalistic, militant, and right-wing groups who taunt us with it, challenging our patriotism.

Lady Liberty had so many faces on our coins -- from the young beauty with flowing tresses in the 1790s to the goddess of power and grace in her 20th Century appearances. She sat, stood, and strode as a paragon of numismatic art, the central icon of the nation. Featured on the reverse of these coins was a graceful, naturalistic eagle, usually perched or flying. (Lady Liberty does currently adorn silver and gold bullion coins made by the U.S. Mint, but these are stored by dealers and investors and not circulated. The Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea $1 coins are not circulated widely either, and, in any case, they show images of individuals rather than an image of an ideal of freedom that is common to us all.)

The Lady disappeared from the penny in 1909 when Abraham Lincoln made his appearance upon it. In 1932 George Washington replaced her on the quarter. Thomas Jefferson appeared on the nickel in 1938, although the Lady had been removed from that coin in 1913 by the dignified Indian Head with Buffalo reverse. Benjamin Franklin replaced her on the half-dollar in 1948, and he in turn was bumped off that coin by John F. Kennedy in 1964. Dwight Eisenhower had a short run on the silver dollar (1971-1978).

The disappearance of Lady Liberty doesn't rate a "Cold Case" file at the FBI, nor are there plaques or dedications to her memory in Washington. Politicians don't seem to be aware that it happened. Some of us, however, have noticed that they have shaved, scraped, and worn thin our liberties since she dropped out of sight.

Our once-proud coinage has been degraded into base-metal tokens with institutional, emblematic, or regional images on the reverses. This coinage is no longer of silver and gold, despite the admonition in the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 10, Clause 1, which says: "No State shall . . . make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts . . ." This constitutional provision was simply ignored in the 20th Century because American capitalism found that gold and silver coinage was impeding its ambitions for global expansion. Our paper money has been debased, too, and represents, in part, a debt we're running up against future generations.

We took Lady Liberty for granted, and she disappeared. We also have taken liberty itself for granted, and it is disappearing. If we close our eyes and visualize Lady Liberty, and feel what it is like to be her, and take into ourselves just one good breath of her essence, we will know where liberty stands on the issues of the day. We will know what we need to do and how to do it.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Peter Michaelson is a psychotherapist in Pasadena, CA . He is author of Democracy's Little Self-Help Book, and can be reached at www.PeterMichaelson.com.

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