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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cmbdii, post: 4550, member: 655&quot;]Still, Lady Liberty is a distinctly American image, copied by the French.&nbsp; Our slide from a free republic to a democracy is due in large part to the desire of some here to emulate the French ideal of collectivism rather than our own model of government based on the sovereignty of the individual in whom God vested inalienable rights.</p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp; The French have a triumvirate of &#039;liberte, egalite`,fraternite&quot;, represented by two women and a man from Roman imagery.&nbsp; The American model is that of Liberty depicted alone with the solitary eagle for a reverse design.&nbsp;&nbsp; The solitary images on both sides of the coins are representative of the individual, whose rights government is instituted to secure, rather than the collectivist ideal of subsumation of the individual for the greater good of the collective.</p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp; As to the seated design, the symbolism differs from the seated Brittania image in that the British version represents a sovereign national ruler of an empire whose identity is the identity of the nation, while our own seated Liberty represents the American ideal of the source of sovereignty, the individual whose liberty is the eternal check on tyranny.&nbsp; The American ideal of sovereignty is the philosophy that sovereign power is merely delegated to the government by the individual and that government has no sovereignty but that entrusted it by the true sovereigns, the citizens. </p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp; Our history and the philosophy behind the symbolism is an important part of numismatics.&nbsp; Despie artistic influences from elsewhere, the symbolism on our coins is unique, or at least it was before the images of regrettably unhanged tyrants became the norm for obverse imagery.&nbsp; Now, having the images of some of the&nbsp; admirable early presidents along with the images of the&nbsp; two worst tyrants in our history makes our circulation coins little different from those of the failed Greek democracy or the Roman empire.</p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp; A change in the imagery of the circulation coinage signalled a change in the relationship between government and governed.&nbsp; Where we once had government by consent of the governed, we now have government rule in defiance of the original agreement between the states.&nbsp; In effect, we are now ruled by the government where the intent of the founders was to make government our servant, to be ruled by the citizenry.</p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp; Images of actual people should indeed be limited to commemorative issues and should never appear on our circulation coinage, I can agree with you there.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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