Given the impending worthlessness of United States currency, my first instinct is to say no and say it loudly. I’d sooner have the face of the greatest President of the 20th century chiseled into the side of Mt. Rushmore, where it will endure for ages to come. But the proposal has been made, so let’s give it some consideration.

Former President Ronald Reagan could achieve a newfound currency: his face emblazoned on a crisp $50 bill. The Gipper could supplant Grant.

That is the intent of Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, who would like to replace the face of Ulysses S. Grant with Reagan’s image on that particular greenback. The North Carolina Republican introduced legislation to that effect on Tuesday.

“Every generation needs its own heroes,” Mr. McHenry said. “One decade into the 21st century, it’s time to honor the last great president of the 20th and give President Reagan a place beside Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy.”

The latter two are emblazoned on the dime and half dollar, respectively.

“President Reagan was a modern day statesman, whose presidency transformed our nation’s political and economic thinking,” Mr. McHenry continued. “Through both his domestic and international policies he renewed America’s self confidence, defeated the Soviets and taught us that each generation must provide opportunity for the next.”

Correct on every count, although I would annotate Mr. Henry’s comment by noting that Ronald Reagan did not transform our political and economic thinking: his presidency was a desperate attempt to reverse over 40 years’ worth of Democrat Socialist efforts to transform our political and economic thinking. Had his successor not been an eclair-spined RINO, there is a very good possibility the effort that began in 1981 might have gained sufficient momentum to have forestalled the Presidency of Bill Clinton and the subsequent, rapid decline of the United States as a great free market republic.

There will, of course, be critics of the proposal. Some will be people of good will who bear no malice toward the Gipper but simply prefer to retain the status quo. Nothing wrong with that and as far as arguments against the idea go, I suppose I can agree, in spite of the love and great respect I have for President Reagan.

However, a dollar will get you ten that most of the critics of the proposal will be the same reflexive, knee-jerk, cliched statist liberals who despise Ronald Reagan and everything he stood for with as much seething fury now as they did when he was President. I’m talking about the bunch that derided him as an amiable dunce, an idiot, a nuke-happy cowboy and a witless Hollywood actor - rather ironic, considering how chummy so many of them are with truly witless Hollywood actors today.

These are the same liberal ideologues who would argue - with a straight face, mind you - that instead of Ronald Reagan, the face on the fifty dollar bill should belong to Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton, despite that fact that both are still living. (Given the current street price for a back-alley oral quickie - so I’m told - I suppose it would make better sense to put Clinton’s face on a twenty dollar bill).

One of these critics, a libtard Congressman from - where else? - California, attempts to wax sarcastic in his criticism of the idea but, alas, comes across less a brilliant student of history than an idiotic partisan hack.

Democrats, however, seem to be opposed to the idea. Rep. Brad Sherman, who serves on the House Financial Services Committee, reportedly said Reagan is too controversial.

“Our currency ought to be something that unites us,” he said.

Something that unites us, eh? You mean the way Grant united the North and the South during his tenure as the Union army’s top general during the bloodiest war in American history? Ask the folks in Vicksburg, Mississippi - the ones whose ancestors lived in caves and ate tree bark and roots to survive while Grant laid siege to the city and pretty much destroyed it. He united them in their misery.

Then there was the infamous General Order 11 issued by Grant in 1862 calling for the expulsion of all Jews from territories under his command:

1. The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the Department [of the Tennessee] within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.
2. Post commanders will see to it that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from headquarters.
3. No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application of trade permits.

How’s that unity working out for you libtards so far? I know…bad question, given the profound (if latent and generally suppressed) anti-Semitism so rampant on the liberal side of the divide these days.

But hey…all is not lost. You see, Ulysses S Grant suffered from what we today would delicately describe as “a functional physical addiction to ethanol.” In those days - when people spoke English plainly and much more eloquently than they do today - he was known as a drunkard. At some point int time after the Vicksburg campaign, Lincoln dispatched people to keep an eye on Grant’s drinking and at one point he was obliged by Major John Rawlins to make a sobriety pledge. Hell, we ought to use Grant’s likeness as the new unifying logo for Alcoholics Anonymous!

Sarcasm has surfaced in the press as well.

“$50 for Reagan’s head,” wrote Richard Adams of Britain’s Guardian newspaper Wednesday.

Actually, it’s the likeness of Reagan on a $50 bill, you limey asshole.

“What did Grant ever do? Apart from win the Civil War for the North and so save the union. And end Reconstruction. And defend African Americans and native American civil rights. And sign the treaty of Washington,” Mr. Adams quipped.

Grant won the Civil War alright, but not because he outmaneuvered Robert Lee and Stonewall Jackson or deployed superior strategies and tactics. Time and again he was outmaneuvered by the Rebels and finally resorted to using Union troops to essentially deplete Confederate ammunition. Union casualties in many of the battles he led were so staggering that he earned the sobriquet “Grant the Butcher.”

Nor did Grant truly end Reconstruction - he merely made it better organized by stationing Union troops throughout the South to protect the black population from predations by the KKK and its sympathizers.

As for the Treaty of Washington (which settled the so-called “Alabama Claims”), the entire matter was orchestrated by Hamilton Fish, one of the few competent - and uncorrupted - members of Grant’s otherwise thoroughly corrupt cabinet.

But apart from that, what? Did he conquer Grenada? No. Did he star in ‘Bedtime for Bonzo’? No.”

True, Grant did not conquer Grenada. But he did attempt to annex the island of Santo Domingo for the purpose of relocating free American blacks there. It was a pure, blatantly imperialistic attempt that was thwarted by the Senate in 1871. And no, he did not star in any Hollywood production of which I am aware. Then again, he died twenty years or so before the invention of motion pictures.

Now I have a few questions for Mr. Adams:

Did Grant ever usher in the longest period of peacetime economic prosperity in American history? No. In fact, Grant’s term as President was marred by an economic depression that lasted for five years.

Did Grant ever defeat an enemy as powerful as a nuclear armed Soviet Union? Nope. Reagan did that - along with Maggie Thatcher and Pope John Paul II. True, there were no nuclear weapons in the late 19th century. Then again, there was no “Bedtime for Bonzo” either.

Did Grant ever inspire in Americans the degree of pride and confidence in our republic that Reagan did on a continuing basis even after leaving office? Not that I’m aware of. Grant was too busy battling corruption in his own administration while President and then occupying himself with attempting to salvage his legacy afterward.

Was Reagan’s tenure as President of the United States a perfect one? Hardly. He made his share of bone-headed mistakes as every President does. But the good he accomplished far outweighs by any measure the bad that was unintentionally wrought.

Permit me, my friends to bastardize a few lines from Shakespeare:

The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
But let it not be with Reagan…rather,
Let us celebrate and remember all the good he hath done
And the greatness he hath given a republic he so cherished

He was our friend, faithful and just to his nation…
He hath brought much prosperity home to America,
Whose windfalls did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Reagan seem ambitious or stupid?

You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then
to commemorate him on our currency?

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason… Bear with me;
My heart is in the tomb there with Reagan,
And I must pause till it come back to me.