MLK

One of my mottoes has always been that you should emulate behavior, not people. No person is perfect. And when we devote so many statues, dollars, buildings, and days to the individual rather than their ideals, we do both them and ourselves a slight disservice.

I really believe that MLK day should be replaced with something more broad in its terms: Civil Rights Day. It would include not only what he accomplished or attempted to accomplish through his principles, much of which was only realized later, but also everyone else who struggled toward greater civil liberties for all.

While we're at it, let's remove all of our presidents from the various dollar bills and put on authors, artists, and others who have made the country great through individual efforts rather than through the positions they held. Ben Frank can obviously stay because despite his status as a politico, he was a lot more. Keep in mind that the cult of personality of putting presidents on coins is more of a 20th century creation.