Republicans are now plotting to replace the dime’s likeness of FDR, who (for all his illiberal faults) presided over a historic expansion of the conception of government as a force for social justice, the end of a Depression, and a war against Nazism, with one of Reagan, who presided over historic government deficits, the expansion of the military-industrial complex, the erosion of civil liberties, and the turning of the government’s back on the suffering in society.

No surprise there.