America the Contranym
Contranyms are words that are their own antonym or opposite, for instance the word clip. You can use a paper clip to clip together pieces of paper, or you can clip your hair and remove, in other words the clip giveth and the clip taketh away. The United States can be seen as a contranym of what it’s original conceptualization and working example at least through the “Era of Good Feelings.” Of course, our modern sensibilities disapprove of the behavior of the people we call the “Founding Fathers”, but we shouldn’t throw out the proverbial baby with the bath water. The baby, following the analogy, that their ideas or teachings shouldn’t be thrown out with their bathwater of their actions or behaviors especially contrary to their own teachings. In essence the Founding Fathers were their own contranym, and they teach us valuable lessons for us to move forward today.
Most importantly to help us navigate moving forward from where we as a nation are today, the lesson that Abolitionists like John and Abigail Adams could stand the presence of and even befriend a slave owner like Thomas Jefferson. Together, they were able to set aside their differences “in order to form a more perfect union”. They were saying in our Constitution that they understood that they didn’t have all the answers, nor did any one person have all of the answers which is the reason for checks and balances, vetoes, amendments, etc.
We went from “these States United, to “The United States”, and we seem to have been losing what this experiment in self-governance is all about. Constantly, we hear from the extremes in society, and we have forgotten this country was founded in the belief in a middle ground. Everything was a compromise and we have compromised ourselves out of the very thing that makes this work, that is the ability to let others follow their path. Since the inception of this experiment, we have marginalized various groups of people for a multitude of reasons, because human nature is to have the ego make us believe we are better.
Federalist paper No. 51 states “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” Sadly, we just started to believe everything we were told because the people we placed to represent us understood that they had to go home to the people they represented. When the constitution was written checks and balances were designed to protect the private interest of each individual.