Moving Forward Does Not Mean We Should Forget Our Past

I have to admit that I do not read the news very often. When I do, it's usually because there's a very intriguing headline on my Yahoo homepage. Every once in a while I'll visit CNN.com, but that's only if I want to stay really current.

Yesterday, when I got to my Yahoo homepage, the story that was displayed most prominently was a story entitled "Amazing New Designs For The Dollar Bill." Intrigued by both the picture and the headline, I clicked on the story (here's the link for those of you who would like to read it: http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/721294).

Now, I understand the want, or even the need, to give our dollar a make-over. We've given the $2o bill a couple of make-overs--why not give the rest of the bills upgrades as well? Everything deserves the chance to be modern and interesting, right? The thing that makes me irritated is that almost none of the new dollar designs feature our Founding Fathers or any of the men who created long-lasting legacies (I went and checked the actual online competition). I think the idea of putting historic icons on our money is wonderful, but what better icon can you get than George Washington or Abraham Lincoln? And when you start putting President Obama under the list of historic icons, as Gartland did in the article, I have to start to wonder about the validity of that list. Yes, I understand that President Obama is a novelty because he is the first African American President that this country has had, and I think that is wonderful. But there have been plenty of other very prominent and influential African American people in our country's history (Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., just to name a few). President Obama has been in office for two years, and in that two years, has he really done anything worthy of the title "historic icon"? Did he lead a small, rather untrained, army against the world's greatest force so that his country could have freedom of speech, religion, etc.? Did he make numerous scientific "breakthroughs" and contribute heavily to the construction of the government of this nation? Did he liberate a people and gather his nation together after four years of a bloody civil war? What has Obama done to merit his standing beside the great people, such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln, that are already featured on our currency?

Perhaps I am overreacting to this new dollar design. Perhaps President Obama really is a historic icon, and I just can't see it. I just don't think that "moving forward" necessarily implies that we forget the men who truly made this nation great.