James M. Redwine

Authors

Natural Law, Morality and Democracy

by Leave a Comment

Our homo sapiens species has been around about two to three hundred thousand years. We probably began biologically in Africa with what we assert is our Western culture becoming ascendant in southern Europe about twenty-five hundred years ago. The Greeks and the Romans laid the foundation for our civilization and we still rely upon their theories of what a civilized society should be, especially in regard to morality and law.

History is replete with rising and falling societies that have gone from collectively agreed upon legal systems to usurpation of power by elites that caused the society to fall upon its own sword. While there are many reasons why each “eternal” nation collapsed, as Plato posited in his Republic, a society rules by consensus then by a ruling party in its own interests. The rulers define the laws based upon what the autocrats desire, then define anyone who breaks such laws a wrongdoer. This is the final stage of a great civilization. Law moves from a consensus among a majority of the citizens as to what is right and good to a decree from the powerful based upon what they want.

Thousands of years ago primitive societies found they could live better lives among themselves and with their neighbors if they cooperated on such matters as the sharing of natural resources and respect for the person and property of others. This was the beginning of morality; and still moral behavior by individuals and nations comes down to treating others as we wish to be treated. Gradually, such nascent civilizations came to realize that as Aristotle said, legal systems (laws) were necessary because people could not restrain desire for power. If people were perfect, laws would not be needed but, as we are not, to ensure justice we must have law. And if the laws remain just, a society can survive life’s inevitable chaos.

Such philosophers as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle believed the world was grounded in Natural Law. Law just existed as did gods. Mankind only needed to divine what the gods required and apply such rules to humanity. If mankind ignored this immutable Natural Law, then chaos would rein. This concept of the eternal existence of Natural Law was at the core of most of the great legal theories from the ancient Greeks up to our Founding Fathers and is still prevalent today in many countries. In America, we separated law from superstition and left it to individuals to believe or not. This separation of theocracy from democracy was a new concept 250 years ago and has helped preserve our nation through many moral crises such as the Civil War and political in-fighting today. The First Ten Amendments of our Constitution are the rock by which we thrive.

Experience has proven that relying on a fear of a god or gods to enforce laws fails in the face of human nature. We have found that it is human law that must set limits on the natural tendency of mankind to abuse power. Over the last twenty-five hundred years or so we have sought systems of law that restrain autocratic impulses and protect individual rights. The most successful of such systems so far has been the Separation of Powers legal system as set forth in the United States Constitution.

Our Constitution was not based on Natural Law but upon the theories of such visionaries as Baron de Montesquieu. (1689-1755), John Locke (1632-1704), and especially, James Madison (1751-1836) and James Wilson (1742-1798). Wilson not only was a contributing author to our Constitution but also sat on our first United States Supreme Court. These legal philosophers recognized the major problem of instituting a lasting democratic legal system was preventing autocrats from usurping powers that properly belong to the citizens.

The division of executive power and legislative power as a restraint on one another was not sufficient. The inclusion of a third branch of government, the judiciary, was the piece of the puzzle that our Founders devised to answer this fatal flaw that had occurred in other legal systems which had failed, because as power corrupted the leaders, democracy collapsed into tyranny. In America today, our Legislative Branch has generally abandoned its role of restraining our out-of-control Executive Branch and our Judicial Branch has sometimes not asserted proper restraints on both of the other branches.

Is America in a vulnerable position democratically today? Probably not, as yet. However, when the Executive repeatedly takes the country to war in spite of virtually every poll indicating a significant majority of the electorate objects, and the Legislative Branch is supine in its duties concerning the power to declare war and the Judiciary fiddles away, the will of the people is frustrated and democracy might teeter. This could be one of those times as Greece, Rome and numerous other democracies discovered when it is critical that all three branches not only stay in their lane but gird their Constitutional loins up about them and courageously execute their own Constitutionally defined responsibilities.

You can also follow us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”

Living Law of a Democratic Society

by Leave a Comment

Jim’s desk at JPeg Osage Ranch. Photo by Peg Redwine

President Trump promises to annihilate a nation of 92 million people if his unconditional terms of capitulation are not met by the autocratic leaders of Iran. Pope Leo XIV calls for world-wide peace. President Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have twice ordered surprise bombings of Iran during peace negotiations to end a war started and maintained by Israel and the United States. President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu criticize the Pope for not joining with them in their demands. The Pope continues to call for peace.

President Trump is weaponizing his self-appointed and individually controlled Department of Justice to punish and eliminate from government many persons involved in his election loss of 2020. The president has established a 1.6-billion-dollar fund of taxpayer money to pay some of the insurrectionists who tried to violently overturn the 2020 election. Trump claims the 2020 election was an illegal takeover of our federal government.

President Trump has proudly killed the leaders of Iran’s government using about 100-billion-dollars of America’s funds and virtually uncontested military force. The president sees no inconsistency in his belief that America’s government was illegally prevented from power while he and Netanyahu removed Iran’s government by force. What is the paradox between calling out an alleged overthrow of a democratic election while “bombing Iran back to the Stone Age” to remove its leaders?

All societies have legal systems. Autocratic societies have legal systems in name only as the rulers have the power to disregard or misapply the written laws. If they do not like established laws, say that only Congress has the power to involve America in war, then the dictatorial ruler can simply ignore all restrictions. However, in a democracy, a country is not to be run by vacillating fiats of one or a few people, but according to due process established by the majority. That is the absolute bedrock of the “Living Law of a Democratic Society”.

Jerome Hall (1901-1992) was an internationally renowned professor of jurisprudence at Indiana University School of Law in Bloomington, Indiana from 1939-1970. I was fortunate to attend his last Indiana class in jurisprudence, The Study of Legal Philosophy, in the summer of 1970 before he retired and moved his teaching to the University of California, Hastings College of Law until 1986. I found Professor Hall’s class to be my greatest challenge and greatest learning experience.

In his marvelous book, Living Law of Democratic Society, published in 1949, Professor Hall examines how societies form legal systems and, especially in democratic societies, how they live by them. A society such as the United States maintains a legal system in constant flux, but is guided by its lodestone of keeping its democracy by not allowing the constantly shifting legal framework to slide into autocracy. In America, our guiding principles are firmly established within our Constitution which may bend or sway but never break.

Americans know what is right: offensive wars are wrong morally and must always be guarded against if our republic is to survive and not fall into the abyss of Nazi Germany or Zionist Israel or the destruction of countless once democratic societies which lost their freedoms. It is not insignificant that Professor Hall lived through the evil of Japan, Italy and Germany in WWII and thereafter in 1949 wrote his scholarly treatise of democratic legal systems that had lost their way. Today, in my opinion, he would strongly caution America not to allow Zionist Israel to mislead us into evil as so many countries allowed Nazi Germany to do.

What should we do? What can we do? Professor Hall might guide us toward the original democratic society and point out as did Plato:

“The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.”

Plato meant that the general Greek population allowed people of lower morality who sought office not to serve but to slowly accumulate absolute power. In the 1930’s and 40’s the Japanese citizenry was not generally evil, but through lethargy and desire for ease it allowed Emperor Hirohito and General Tojo and their cadre of power brokers to slowly move Japan towards autocracy without limits. The Italian populace was not prone to squelch rights in general, but it lazily watched as Benito Mussolini seized more and more power until Italy was lost within Germany’s military scheme. The Germans had had over a thousand years of a great culture that included many Jewish, Romanian and other minorities, but the average German allowed Hitler and his ilk to blame immigrants and Jews for Germany’s loss in WWI which led to the loss of all of Germany.

In 1948 Jewish people immigrated to what was then Palestine and began to almost imperceptibly force out Arabs, Christians and Palestinians until now the autocratic Zionist government has committed the same holocaust on Palestinians, Syrians, West Bankers, Yemenis and Lebanese as the Nazis did the Jews in Germany. In each case it has been a minority of power-hungry politicians such as President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu who have demonized minorities such as immigrants or Muslims and have sought to supplant the democratically arrived at law with their own despotic rule.

This was all done as the well-meaning but uninvolved general populace did nothing but cheer on the coming Nakba so that land and resources could be stolen. We Americans are a happy nation and prefer ease to strife. I know from many within my own family and friends religion is often at the root of the worship of Donald Trump and support for his policies. That is why it is enheartening that Pope Leo has taken a firm and public stand for peace. I am not Catholic, but if I were I would be proud to pay attention as the sirens entice us onto the rocks.

In the United States today, our Living Law has ebbed into being ruled not by our democratic system, but by power-mad autocrats and their sycophants who are convinced they know what they want and what the rest of us should receive. We are not too late to pull down the temple walls and return to the righteous path of our Constitution. However, time waits for no one.

You can also follow us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”

Epic Fury Revisited

by Leave a Comment

“Peg, Peg, are you awake?”

“I am now that you have poked your elbow through my ribs. What are you laughing about?”

“I just solved President Trump’s kerfuffle in the Middle East. It came to me in a dream; I knew you’d want to hear it. It has everything. No blood, no money and no more angst. Do you want to get up and have a hot chocolate or just lie here and be amazed?”

“What I want is to go back to sleep, but apparently that’s not an option. So, go ahead; let’s hear what, if anything, is going on in your head.”

“Oh, good. The country needs my help. Listen up, I think this borders on brilliant; it’s kinda like something Trump, Hegseth, J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio might have thought of on their own, if they’d thought of it.”

The Dream Solution

President Trump summoned Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to the oval office after he saw a FOX NEWS report of a portion of Hegseth’s prayer at the Pentagon directed to the war against Iran:

“Grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence.
….
[L]et justice be executed swiftly and without remorse.”

“Now, Pete, that is a real prayer. Where in the world did you come up with that?”

“Mr. President, I took that straight from the Bible. I am sure you are familiar with Psalm 144 that holds: ‘Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle.’”

“Oh, sure, I used to be referred to suggested passages, but then I found Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount to be rather D.E.I. in its approach so, I quit wasting time on such by-gone thinking. The world now looks to me to solve these things. After all, I am the peacemaker.”

“Anyway, Pete, I just wanted to commend your attitude of all out victory and run an idea by you as to how we might land on our feet in this Iran thing. What do you think about a little diversionary tactic such as finding a country we can get to surrender without any more blood or tax dollars wasted? We need an enemy we can truly subdue in a couple of days, you know, one we can blame for criticizing our righteous invasion of Iran. I have one in mind based on what this guy from Chicago just said on March 26th about the war. No, no, it wasn’t that slob J.B. Pritzker who wants to run against me in 2028. He is in Illinois, but I mean that other Chicago preacher who used to be called Robert Francis Prevost but now dresses like a mullah or an Arab Sheik. Just this past Palm Sunday he said our ‘… hands are full of blood and that God does not listen to our prayers because we are waging war and using religion to justify violence.’”

“I think the fellow does not like my policies and is challenging my authority. Doesn’t he realize I represent 350 million people? Of course, he touts his leadership of 1.4 billion Catholics, 5 ½ of which are on the U.S. Supreme Court, but most of those people do not even own one golf course. And he lives in the smallest country on earth with the smallest army. Do you know there are only 135 members of the Swiss Guards and their last military engagement was at the sea battle of Lepanto in 1571? Further, they dress funny with their red, yellow and blue pantaloons and their only weapons are long sticks. How long could they last against our troops or even one Abrams tank?”

Photo by Peg Redwine

“Most importantly, I bet if I decided to take over the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV would just turn the other cheek. Then we could raise really huge campaign contributions by converting the Sistine Chapel into a really high-end rental suite like the Lincoln bedroom. We could also sell off that depressing Pieta thing and replace it with a statue of me.”

“What do you think, Pete? It would be easier than Venezuela and a whole lot less trouble than Iran. Also, the Pope doesn’t have any way to restrict access to the Mediterranean Sea or even to the Trevi Fountain. Okay, that’s enough planning, let’s go for it this afternoon! This should really divert attention from Iran and Epstein. Let the games begin.” 

“To sleep, perchance to dream.”
Hamlet, Act 3, scene 1

Photo by Peg Redwine
Photo by Peg Redwine

“What a dream. What do you think? The solution was right there in my head and now I just need to get the President and the Pope to sit down for some real Trump-like deal making. I’m pretty sure the Pope will be amenable to a Trump negotiation calling for unconditional surrender. What’s the Pope going to do, run over the President with that funny little golf cart?”

“I can’t speak for the Pope, but if you don’t shut up and let me go back to sleep, you won’t need to worry about it.”

You can also follow us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”

It Is On U.S.

by Leave a Comment

The title of a CNN article by Aaron Blake is, “Trump Launches the Regime-Change Effort in Iran that he Pledged to Avoid”. But President Trump did not start our wars with Iran, America did. We live in a republic where we choose our representatives. Their actions are our actions. The blame and shame for Israel sending three missiles into an elementary girls school in Minab in southern Iran to prevent the girls from developing nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, is ours. We murdered more than 100 children in what Israel called its preemptive opening act of self-defense. We share Israel’s shame and blame for this crime; but we did not have the right to elect Benjamin Netanyahu. No, our Supreme Leader, who enabled and abetted these war crimes, is in office because we chose him twice. Or, as Donald Trump says three times, due to what he calls the stolen 2020 election.

During the Viet Nam War we Americans were branded with our country’s public attitude as reflected by the stated military strategy against the people of Viet Nam and Cambodia. General Curtis LeMay said we were going to “Bomb them back to the Stone Age”. Fifty-eight thousand of our soldiers and over 1,000,000 Vietnamese were slaughtered in that endless and mindless tragedy. That is the same strategy Israel has been and still is applying in Palestine with our encouragement, weaponry and diplomatic immunity. Israel is using the same actions now in Lebanon and Syria.

Americans who opposed the Viet Nam War and those who now oppose the war with Iran are reminded of the 1960’s folk song by Phil Ochs, “Is There Anybody Here?”:

♫ ….
[Verse 3]

Is there anybody here
Who thinks that following the orders takes away the blame?
Is there anybody here
Who wouldn’t mind to murder by another name?
…. ♫

Or as pointed out by the war hero, Senator Mark Kelly, whom Secretary of War Pete Hegseth wants to court martial for pointing out what is clearly the moral and legal duty of the military that they should refuse illegal orders. Before Kelly flew all those combat missions during the Viet Nam War, he could have paid a medico to find bone spurs in his ankles and let some other “suckers and losers”, as Trump called D-Day’s heroes, go risk life and limb to serve their country in Viet Nam.

President Trump declared one of his main objects of our attacks on Iran was regime change. With Israel’s killing of Ali Khamenei and other senior leaders of Iran’s government, that objective has been met, not by ballots, but by bullets. America has the right to regime change also. We have several non-ballistic alternatives and all of them require citizen and elected representative involvement. Impeachment is one non-violent alternative.

But, to cast the blame on the narcissistic, megalomaniacal military decisions of one person out of 350 million does not absolve the rest of us. We are America; President Trump is one American. The blame and shame are on U.S. all.

Follow us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”

 

Coach Cignetti, The Philosopher King

by Leave a Comment

Curt Cignetti was hired to be Indiana University’s football coach beginning with the 2024 college football season. In 2022 IU’s record was four wins and eight losses. For 2023 it was three wins and nine losses. In 2024 IU lost two games, one in the College Football Playoffs, and won eleven. IU just won the College Football National Championship for 2025-26 by being the only undefeated college team and posting sixteen wins and zero losses. IU started 2025 as history’s losingest college football program based on over 700 losses. A couple of basic questions are: How did IU go from the whale dung of college football to Marathon type victors (490 BC) and who wrought this miracle?

Those are important issues to ponder. However, America is currently dealing with other much more important matters than sports. Perhaps we can learn something as a country by examining how Indiana University went in two years from football fodder to pundits accusing my alma mater of cheating to win games. That has been the ultimate unintended compliment from the envious. We are now so good we must have called upon the gods or stolen signs or somehow bought a championship with NIL money. Surely no mere educational ivory tower could turn southern Indiana limestone into football lemonade in only two years.

Dunn Meadow and the Little Jordan River must have been co-opted by trolls or John Mellencamp and Mark Cuban. Only magic and money could explain the college that lost its first game in 1887, then followed it with over 700 losses, to winning the National Championship on January 19, 2026. But, what if instead of just assuming this Hoosier triumph is but a logical lacuna, we try to learn something from IU and its miraculous turnaround that can be applied to help America out of its miasma.

Is it possible that Curt Cignetti and his staff are the Philosopher Kings of football whose methods should be applied to our democracy? As Plato recommended in his Republic, instead of us choosing our leaders on the basis of popularity created by promising to give stuff away or to conquer other countries because we want their stuff, maybe we should elect our leaders based on their character, ability and hard work as proven by their past performance. Maybe we need portals which incorruptible leaders could pass through to be rewarded for their proven public-spirited expertise; Name, Image and Likeness indeed, but most importantly, proven character!

Instead of our political leaders being voted into office based on the drivel of cackling TV panelists who hate or love whomever they are promoting or opposing, what if we citizens evaluate our future leaders as Coach Curt Cignetti and his staff did for our Indiana University football champions? Quality of past performance, not feckless promises of future nirvanas are the lodestone we voters can learn to follow based on the example of these 2026 Hoosiers. Too often five-star potential from our politicians metamorphosizes into a sense of entitlement without the sweat required for production. Maybe what America needs from its leaders is evidence of proven positive results based on performance. What if we stop mouthing MAGA and adopt for our motto: “Hoo, Hoo, Hoo, Hoosiers!”?

On Facebook follow us at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”

Therapy

by Leave a Comment

Photo by Peg Redwine

America needs therapy; about 350 million counselors seems about right. Where to find them and how to compensate them are the seminal issues. As therapists always approach client treatment with the same, lone question, “How do you feel about that?”, the answers to America’s dilemmas and to each of our personal problems must lie within. We need only to bring forth for analysis the quandaries we are facing, then have other individuals or groups help us solve things for ourselves.

For example, a Catholic penitent might say, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned”; he or she divulges the sin, then does whatever penance, say ten Hail Mary’s, the priest decides will expiate those transgressions. Or we pay $500 per hour to psychiatrists who might treat us by asking, “How do you feel about that?”. An example of a United States problem in need of therapy might be invading Greenland or Venezuela. Perhaps we could allow our Congressional therapists to have us explain to ourselves why America deserves and must have Greenland or Venezuela or even Iran or whatever country it will take to “Make America, or us as individuals, Great Again”.

This approach to therapy for people or for countries has been used for thousands of years. The Greeks in Persia, the Romans in Palestine, the Zionists in Palestine, the United States in Iraq, etc., etc., etc. If armed conflict offends your sensibilities, one could simply join a group that can ask that age old question, “How do you feel about that?” and let each American respond with the knowledge our group will help us work out how we truly feel. The answers are always within, it is just bringing them out that is difficult.

A literary example of successful group therapy was Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast in the Paris of the 1920’s. Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and James Joyce to name just some of the group would meet at Silvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company Bookstore in the Montparnasse neighborhood on the left bank of the Seine River and interchange what would become some of the best writing and therapy of any generation, especially the Lost Generation of post-World War I.

Hemingway’s experience came to mind when my long-time friend, fellow jurist and fellow writer sent me a Christmas present of his therapy group’s book, Holiday Tales from the San Juans. It is a compilation of his writing group that meets each Thursday morning, if so inclined, at the Ruby M. Sisson Memorial Library in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. This Ruby’s Writer’s Guild consists of Judge Albert Northrop, my friend, and some of his friends in Pagosa Springs. Anyone who wishes can offer a written item such as a poem or a personal story for the rest of the Guild to ponder and pontificate upon. This is the epitome of the therapy America needs. Put the innermost thoughts out first then listen to well informed and well-intentioned responses.

An example for America might be, “Should we adhere to our Constitution or ape the behavior of despots such as Putin, Netanyahu or Hitler?” As for this one American, admittedly in need of therapy myself, I suggest a country of Ruby’s Writer’s Guilds generously sharing their thoughts would be more likely to make America America again than heedless hegemony.