The Mercury Dime

When I first was given the opportunity to choose my own username on a mainframe computer (actually, a DEC VAX super-mini) in 1989, I asked for Mercury, the Roman messenger god, the patron of merchants (and pirates, it being sometimes hard to tell them apart). Likely inherited from the Etruscans, Mercury is associated with the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian Thoth, and also, perhaps the Aztec Coyototl, the trickster who invented writing. 

I have been “Mercury” in one form or another on many systems since, and I have held my Gmail account, mike49mercury, for many years. It is true that 49 is my birth year, but to me 49 is the square of 7 for the Mercury 7 astronauts, having lost track of a mercury7 username some decades back. 

 

I sold several articles about the Mercury dime to the American Numismatic Association, the Michigan State Numismatic Society, and others. It does echo the Roman denarius of the Republic with the wings on Liberty’s head modeling the raised face guards on the helmet of Roma. And for better or worse, the coin is in the neo-classical style that was ubiquitous during the gilded age of American aesthetics between the Civil War and the Great Depression. 

As a numismatist, I am a writer, not a collector.
But I can’t make this up from thin air.
So, I do visit coin stores in my town to chat and learn.
And I found this one for myself. 
Very high grade examples like this are extremely common
from the war years 1940-1945
when these were struck in astronomical quantities. 

 

The wings on Liberty’s Phrygian cap (worn by a freed slave) represent freedom of thought. The reverse depicts the Roman fasces, a bundle of rods, the center rod an ax reflecting the absolute authority of the state. In ancient Rome, if found guilty of a felony, the prisoner would be beaten to death with the rods – unless granted the mercy of the ax. Perhaps the best way to resolve that seeming contradiction is to consider the words of the US Supreme Court (Reynolds vs. The United States) in affirming that polygamy is unlawful, regardless of sentiments in the Territory of Utah: You can believe whatever you want, but you cannot do whatever you want. 

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Music Makes You Braver 

Numismatics: the Standard of Proof in Economics 

Forgery and Fraud in Numismatics 

Numismatic Truthseekers 

Hallelujah 

Republican Rebels

The first tyrants were rebels: self-made men on the rise in the archaic Greek world 700-500 BCE.  They replaced kings just as the parallel invention of coinage replaced cows for money, and philosophy replaced religion, and published writing replaced public speaking.  Tyranny led inevitably to oligarchy and then to democracy.  In 514 BCE, at Athens, Aristogeiton and Harmodios assassinated the tyrant Hipparchos making way for the reforms of Kleisthenes in 508 that created democracy.  Since then, rebels have been republicans. 



Julius Caesar and King George III were both denounced as “tyrants” not “dictators.”  The dictator was a constitutional office in Rome, a leading citizen chosen to take command during a crisis.  The most famous was Cincinnatus, the farmer who returned to his plow after soldiering for the republic.  In his name veterans of the American Revolution founded the city on the Ohio River. 

In our time, the dictator came and went with fascism.  We have forgotten how popular fascism was to the Progressives of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries: it promised a unity of business, labor, arts, and sciences under the coordination of the government.  Even those who opposed it thought it would work. 



American Dime 1916-1945 displayed the fasces symbol of unity.
Right: German half-mark and American quarter of the 1930s.

The world suffered Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini; Atatürk, Franco, Metaxas, and Perón; and still others.  Major. Gen. Smedley D. Butler and Prescott S. Bush plotted a “Wall Street Coup” against the New Deal, itself a form of American fascism.  On March 21, 1933, the Michigan Legislature passed the McNitt-Green bill, granting Gov. William Comstock “dictatorial powers” (literally) over banks and then later over insurance companies.  Gov. Comstock had the good sense to turn them down, but it was emblematic of the times.  The democratic republic was considered dead as civilization was submerged under nationalism and socialism. 

Today, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are nearly indistinguishable as President Obama continues the domestic and foreign policies of the former Bush administration.  Where now are the republican rebels? 

Perhaps resistance comes not from different politics but from abandoning political power entirely.  By its nature, it allows no plurality: once we vote - or the decision is made for us - there is no minority choice. 

In the marketplace, your preference does not prevent your neighbor's equal right to any other decision -- or none at all.  I have never seen a Super Bowl, even though over 100 million Americans enjoyed the previous one.

We all have the same President.  Only one Congressman serves my district.  One school board argues with itself and the public over what children should learn -- and are failing to learn.  Here in Austin, a 1% city sales tax provides the only bus system.  "Political choice" is a contradiction in terms.  If there is a "res publica" a "public thing" it is the agora, the marketplace, where all choices are supported -- and where None-of-the-Above is always your right. 

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Unlimited Constitutional Government
Contradictions in the Constitution
Debt: the Seed of Civilization
Entrepreneurship