"The Great Contradiction," Joseph J. Ellis

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding

Joseph J. Ellis

November 22, 2025

 

“Alongside their impressive achievements, the founding generation failed

to reach a just accommodation with the Native American population, and

failed to end slavery or, more realistically, put it on the road to extinction.”

                                                                                                                                Joseph J. Ellis (1943-)

                                                                                                                                The Great Contradiction, 2025

 

In addressing the two situations that violated the ideals stated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, Professor Ellis (retired now and living in Vermont) has done us a favor. In his foreword he wrote that he would leave it to the reader as to whether this was a Greek tragedy, by which he means “inevitable and unavoidable,” or whether it was “Shakespearian,” “a product of inadequate leadership rooted in moral blindness” and thus avoidable.

 

We are reminded that it was not a democracy – a term then associated with demagoguery – that the Founders created, a government not of “the people,” but rather one for “the public,” where the “public interest was the equivalent to the long-term interest of the people, a concept not understood by a majority, “mostly because they were born, lived their lives, and died within a three-hour horse ride.”

 

Professor Ellis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Founding Brothers, provides, via correspondence and letters, portraits of John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, and somewhat longer vignettes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both slave owners, and Alexander McGillivray, chief of the Creek Nation. 

 

Two thirds of the book deals with slavery, which, while concentrated in Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas, was existent in all states in 1790 except Maine and Massachusetts, despite rising voices in the north calling for abolition. The remaining third speaks to the forced movement west of Native Americans. The Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War, provided the new country with all the land from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and from Canada to Spanish-held Florida. Yet three-quarters of that land was inhabited by Native Americans. Despite a series of treaties between the United States and various Indian Nations, demography proved to be destiny, as pioneers pushed west.

 

This is an important book, as the author tackles a sensitive subject with reason and sensitivity. While Professor Ellis does not provide the reader, overtly, his personal feelings as to what type of tragedy was incurred with the failure to address slavery and with the forced removal of Native Americans from their historic hunting grounds, one is left with the sense that a United States would never have been created without accommodating the desires of slave owners – as immoral and antithetical to the concept of liberty as they were – and with allowing the inevitable move west of an ever-expanding immigrant and pioneer people. The United States “would have remained a confederation of sovereign states...”

 

This reader finished the book, with sense that the tragedy was unavoidable, but further impressed by the fortune that we, as Americans today, had in our Founders, imperfect as they were.

"Wherefore Wisdom"

 While I will invade your in-box tomorrow with a book review, it is short (approximately 500 words) and I promise to stay away for the next few days. The below is something to munch on as you prepare your stomach for Thursday.

 

The owl symbolizes all that I wish for our country.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Wherefore Wisdom?”

November 21, 2025

 

“...the most complicated fabric of the most perfect form of government” resulted

from a “great measure of accident” plus “a small ingredient of wisdom and foresight.”[1]

                                                                                                                David Hume (1711-1776)

                                                                                                                Scottish philosopher

                                                                                                                The History of England, 1754

 

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

                                                                                                                Professor George Santayana (1863-1952)

                                                                                                                Reason in Common Sense

                                                                                                                Vol I of The Life of Reason, 1905

 

Across most cultures there are certain values that are ancient, universal and enduring. In the Judeo-Christian world there are the Ten Commandments, especially those that command us to honor our parents, to not kill, steal, bear false witness, commit adultery, or covet our neighbor’s spouse or goods, and there are lessons from Aesop about the value of work, the importance of skepticism, and the detriment of envy – all embedded in his Fables: “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” “The Fox and the Crow,” and “The Fox and the Grapes.” 

 

I have been thinking of these issues as I recently read C.S. Lewis’ 1942 book, The Screwtape Letters and Joseph Ellis’ recent history The Great Contradiction[2].  Lewis’ book is a series of letters from Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, a “novice demon.” It speaks to the temptations of the devil. Ellis discusses the inherent contradiction between the words in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and slavery and the forced removal of Native Americans from their historic lands.  

 

The abolitionist and Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker sermonized in 1853: “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one...But from what I see it bends toward justice.” The study of history is important as Professor Santayana makes clear in an epithet that heads this essay, to understand how, despite abiding values embedded in culture, practices change; evil is ubiquitous and often arrives disguised. It is important that we each learn the ancient lessons of the Ten Commandments and the morals of Aesop, so that we behave civilly and accept responsibility. 

 

It may be that every generation judges past ones based on current standards. Certainly, ours does. Feeling smug and complacent, too many of us spend time judging the ethical shortcomings of past generations, rather than focusing on the failings of our own. It explains the popularity of Nicole Hannah-Jones’ The 1619 Project, made worse by a focus on identity – that people are either victims or oppressors. It may make us feel better to cast blame on those long dead, but history, like evolution, is a continuum. And it moves slowly, as Reverend Parker intimated. According to Google’s AI, modern humans first evolved in Africa more than 300,000 years ago. But it was only five to six thousand years ago that humans formed civil societies. And consider how recently it was that women were allowed to vote!

 

Tribal wars and slavery were common in much of the world into the early 19^th Century. Such conflicts, fueled by political power struggles, resources and historical grievances, are still common in places like the Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria and the Central African Republic. If one includes forced labor, debt bondage, forced marriage and human trafficking an estimated 50 million people today are slaves. And we cannot forget That the 20^th Century was the bloodiest on record – that it gave rise to both Nazism on the right and Communism on the left. Combined, they enslaved an estimated 50 million people and killed double that number. Even today, according to Freedom House, only about 20% of the world’s population live in countries where political rights and civil liberties are protected. Evil persists. We can point to the civil war in Sudan, the conflicts in Myanmar and Syria, the killing of Christians in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Nigeria, the brutal fight in Ukraine, and Israel’s continued existential wars, but individually we would be wise to search our own souls, to cleanse ourselves of the hatred that too often rises to the surface – to consider the words of David Hume in the epithet above. Wisdom has been AWOL.

 

The recent decline in morals that have guided us over many years is not limited to acts of violence. The recent admission by the BBC that they had doctored a January 6, 2021 speech by then President Trump to make it appear he had instigated the attack on the Capitol later that day was a deliberate act of malfeasance. Their decision implied a lack of faith in the ability of their viewers to fairly consider facts and respond appropriately. The same could be said of those who pushed the Russian collusion story of 2016.

 

The values we should return to are simple and ancient ones, ones that have stood the test of time. The world would benefit from a return to those principles laid out in the 10 Commandments, which were delivered over 3,000 years ago. And we would gain from re-reading those tales of the Greek slave Aesop who lived 2,600 years ago. “Wisdom,” Albert Einstein wrote in 1954, “is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”

 

Like knowledge of history, the values that have guided us over the millennia sometimes fade from our conscience, yet they persevere. The inherent rights of individuals, rule of law, limited government and free markets are the foundation on which our country was created and built. Wherefore wisdom? Wisdom requires we not forget.

"Pigs Have Wings," P.G. Wodehouse

 Coming off a big day in the market, this brief essay on Wodehouse’s Pigs Have Wings seemed appropriate. As all Wodehouse fans know this book stars the Empress of Blandings, a “zeppelin-shaped Black Berkshire sow,” as Wodehouse biographer Richard Usborne described her.

 

Enjoy!

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

Pigs Have Wings, P.G. Wodehouse

November 12, 2025

 

“A shudder made the butler’s body ripple like a 

field of wheat when a summer breeze passes over it.”

                                                                                                                P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975)

                                                                                                                Pigs Have Wings, 1952

 

To immerse one’s self in a book is one of life’s great pleasures. And when that book is a Wodehouse one is submerged in a bath of delight.

 

As all Wodehouse fans know, because of “Pigs” in the title, this story is set at Blandings Castle, Shropshire County. The Castle, “a noble pile” in the town of Market Blandings, is home to Lord Emsworth, his sister Constance and younger brother Galahad (Gally) Threepwood. Nearby is the town of Much Matchingham and Matchingham Hall, home to Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe.

 

The time is just days before the annual Shropshire Agricultural Show and the Fat Pigs class, a contest that the Empress of Blandings, the “apple of Lord Emsworth’s eye,” has won over the past two years, beating the Pride of Matchingham. This year, however, the Empress is in an even closer match with Sir Gregory’s new entrant, the Queen of Matchingham. Emsworth, the 9^th Earl, is a doddering, absent-minded man who is never happier than when draped over the Empress’ pigsty. As the title suggests, neither pig stays put.

 

Besides the shenanigans regarding the two pigs who are perfectly content as long as they get their 57,000 calories a day, the reader becomes enmeshed in a romantic comedy involving three couples. The genius of “the master” (a phrase associated with Wodehouse) is in how he unravels the tangled mess he creates. The joy for the reader is in how he takes a bucketful of words, unscrambles and reassembles them: 

 

What Lord Emsworth loves best – “...listening to sweetest of all music, the sound of the Empress restoring her tissues...”

 

Engaged to Orlo Vosper, but in love with Jerry Vail: “Penny gave an interested squeak.”

 

Emsworth’s former pig man, George Cyril Wellbeloved: “...his once alert brain a mere mass of inert porridge.”

 

Beach, Lord Emsworth’s butler: “But his jaw had fallen, and he was looking at his visitor in the manner of the lamb mentioned by the philosopher Schopenhauer when closeted with the butcher.”

 

Story’s end: “The moon shone down on an empty trough.”

 

Pigs Have Wings was first published fifty years after Wodehouse’s first book, The Pot Hunters, and twenty-two years before his last book, Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen. In between, he wrote and published at least ninety books and short stories. I have read most. This ranks with the best.