James M. Redwine

Women's Rights

Redemption

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Photo by Peg Redwine

America was born from the hope for a world where every person was of equal worth. In 1776 we had already realized this ideal was not reality. Our Founders sought freedom of choice for themselves while being fully aware they had long denied such equality to countless others. But the dream, and the struggle for it, has always been equal rights for all. Our nation’s recognition that Indigenous Peoples, slaves, women, minors, minorities and the poor struggled without freedom in the Land of the Free, never extinguished our country’s core values upon which we were anchored.

As all sinners, we have backslid and faltered on our 250-year crusade to enhance freedom and welfare for all. However, in the annals of human history no nation has ever held forth the torch of life and liberty for all the earth’s peoples as America has. Might only for right, generosity, humanitarian concern and a faith based upon the equal worth of all peoples, was the mantra of good versus evil that has always been America’s Holy Grail. And just as the Holy Grail, our nation’s ideals have often been more myth than substance. Yet, as a people, we have incrementally struggled through genocidal actions towards Native American equality, from slavery of Negroes to a Black president, from second-class citizenship of women to female astronauts, and from young men as military fodder to eighteen-year-old citizenship, among many other faltering steps up the ladder toward the rights set forth as the foundation of our Constitution.

It took America about our first 170 years to truly achieve a significant part of the core of our true national aspirations. We finally began to realize our Founder’s dreams after World War II with the Marshall Plan of 1948 when we elevated benevolence over vengeance and helped the world recover from the horrors of the earth’s conflagration.

We gradually turned from isolationism to a country generous in spirit and filled with dreams of a new world order. America became a beacon of hope to Europe and then expanded our mission to a peaceful and healthy planet. The United States led the United Nations to quell conflicts and save downtrodden peoples everywhere. And, America finally began to live the reality of that greatest of creeds, “All people are created equal”. From 1948 until we forgot the wisdom of our Founders, we truly were the hope for mankind and seen as such by most of the nations of the earth. What happened?

America had sacrificed greatly to earn its role of a nation of hope, generosity and peace. Sadly, we are no longer seen by much of the planet as a great benefactor because, frankly, we are not. What has brought our country from a guiding light of salvation to just another oppressor of peoples? Israel was created to help Jewish immigrants, but has slowly become an occupier and oppressor of Palestinians and numerous others with America’s enablement. Israel’s genocidal and illegal actions in Palestine have, with strong United States support, bound us in the eyes of the world to the pariah nation status richly earned by Zionist Israel. Are these actions supported by all Americans, including Jewish Americans? No. A majority of Americans and even many Israeli Jews, are opposed to Zionist Israel’s genocidal/hegemonic military actions.

Most countries declare Israel’s actions wrong and illegal. However, most countries also see America as the force allowing Israel’s evil. America has, as it did for many years with slavery, women’s rights and Indigenous Peoples rights, lost its path toward liberty and freedom for all. We have, also, lost our long-held and dearly won position of the paragon of nations. To return to our ideals we must cease enabling Israel’s aggression and occupation of foreign lands. Israel does not need our military or financial support and should not receive it.

Just as we have with numerous other sins of omission and commission during our 250-year struggle to attain the goals of our Charter, now we must make the hard, but right, choice and free ourselves from Israel’s irrational dreams of Middle Eastern dominance. Let us cease from helping Israel’s pursuit of the same dreams we stopped Nazi Germany from achieving.

We should return to our ideals and our true mission as a nation. Just as President George Washington warned us of the dangers of special fondness for any nation, we must sever our myopic and self-defeating entanglement with Israel. We, also, might want to refer to Thomas Paine’s profound calling, “These are the times that try ‘our nation’s’ soul” (1776). Let us return to our country’s purpose for creation and re-claim our rightful place among the nations of the earth that oppose tyranny and support liberty for all. We should begin by atoning for our self-destructive aggression against Iran which was instigated by Israel in furtherance of its own selfish aims. Because, just as blessed are the peacemakers, also, are damned to perdition those who foment or enable tyranny and the unjustified deaths of innocents.

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

Photo by Peg Redwine

The Public Forum

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I have subscribed to The Posey County News and its progenitors for about forty years. At the request of the then editor and owner, Jim Kohlmeyer, in 1990 I began writing “Gavel Gamut”. Current editor Dave Pearce continued to publish my column after he and his wife Connie took over the paper. Neither Jim nor Dave nor Connie ever sought to censor any of the more than 1,000 columns I have written.

Gentle Reader, you are undoubtedly aware of how rare it has become for news outlets to provide a true forum for the exchange of differing views. The Posey County News provides such a forum. The Posey County News is a beacon to the First Amendment at a time that such beacons of illumination are under attack from several powerful and diverse sources. Our republic will not survive as the America our Founders envisioned if our citizens cannot freely express conflicting views, especially on deeply felt issues. As newspapers throughout our country continue to be subsumed by major news outlets, we need more than ever the courage of such local papers as The Posey County News.

Our republic’s free flow of ideas has been the major driver of our desire for “a more perfect union”. There was a time only 21-year-old, white, male citizens could vote. Due to the most vigorous of public debates, now 18-year-old citizens can not only be sent to war, they can vote on who sends them. My first vote for president was when I turned 21 even though I had already earned my honorable discharge from the Air Force.

My grandmother could not vote until 1921 after millions of Americans had demonstrated for her right to do so. It took a Civil War to get Blacks citizenship and many Native Americans are still in a struggle for the right to self-determination; but public outcries are forcing progress.

Therefore, when I opened my October 15, 2025 edition of my Posey County News and saw that Reverend Norman Martin had written a respectful and measured disagreement to one of my columns I was elated. There were no aspersions or threats, just calm opposing views. Thank you, Reverend, for reading my column. I am truly grateful you and I both have the right and, thanks to The Posey County News, the ability to publicly state our views without fear or expectation of favor.

We are all aware of our current climate of uncivil behavior among citizens of differing viewpoints. It may just be my age but I believe our culture was at one time able to discuss without cussing and disagree without canceling. Reverend Martin and I may never have the opportunity to have a cup of coffee and vigorously and respectfully exchange views, but thanks to one of America’s bedrock institutions, The Posey County News, if we ever have the chance, I bet we can do so.

You Say You Want A Revolution

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Photo by Peg Redwine

The Beatles sang:

♪ You say you want a revolution
…
You say you’ll change the Constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me it’s the institution
Well, you know
You’d better free your mind instead ♪

I do not know why those British songsters were singing about changing America’s Constitution during the Viet Nam War. Perhaps they were just selling a song or perhaps they felt it was a return to 1776. Regardless, today in the United States it seems a lot of Americans seek to remake America in their own image and the quickest way is a revolution. Of course, not much thought may have gone into what a revolution would truly mean in 2025 et. seq.

On the other hand, James Madison of the small body and the gigantic brain gave the written word to the revolution he had just participated in and the possible future ones he wanted to prevent by designing a United States Constitution based on a theory that all humans seek to expand their power as much as they are allowed. Therefore, for a democracy to continue existing, the bedrock of our country had to be a government made up of separate functions controlled by competing separate and equal powers. As a people we have had a history of teetering from side to side with only occasionally tipping completely over to any one branch gaining too much power.

The Civil War broke out because all three branches chose conflict over compromise on the issues of slavery and the human rights of African Americans. On other visceral issues, such as Native American rights, Women’s right to vote, use of alcohol or marijuana or wars such as World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, we have managed to let the struggling of the separate governmental powers find a way to come out in an acceptable equilibrium.

We have had countless opportunities to lose our democracy but have eventually stepped back from the brink. The United States Supreme Court has taken more than one foray into excessive power, such as Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857). During Chief Justice Earl Warren’s reign (1953-1969) the Court’s ultra-liberal rulings had much of the public up in arms. There were even billboards on the highways calling for Warren’s impeachment.

And the Legislative Branch has had its attempts at being the conscience of America also. For example, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy set himself up to be the ultimate determiner of what a “true American” was. During the era of “McCarthyism” in the 1940’s and 1950’s the American public generally bought into his “Red Scare” tactics until the facts overcame his allegations.

But it has usually been the Executive Branch where the abuse of power has been the most obvious. The most salient example was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who was president from 1933 until his death during his fourth term in 1945. Even though a great majority of both Congress and the American people objected to American involvement in WWII, Roosevelt manipulated the United States into the war. Of course, he had the aggression of Japan to help his argument.

It was Roosevelt’s long-term in office and some of his unpopular policies that brought about the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that forbids anyone from serving more than two terms as President. Although some supporters of President Donald Trump have advanced the possibility of an exception to this amendment for President Trump. Such moves on behalf of Donald Trump and the current makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court are raising concerns among anti-Trumpers. There exists the possibility that neither the Supreme Court nor the Legislature may provide a proper balance for our democracy as both may be biased in favor of President Trump, especially as about one-half of the electorate has supported him and his policies.

While a revolution may be extremely unlikely, so have been numerous other shifts in power in America throughout our history. There is no need yet to call for extraordinary action by any branch nor from the news media or the public. However, it is the fabric of our democracy that may be being tested once again. There is no harm in remaining true to the wisdom of our nation’s charter and there could be harm from failing to reference it.

Photo by Peg Redwine

Labor Day

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My father’s father was killed in an accident when my dad was nine years old. My father had to quit school in his third-grade year to help his mother support the family. He went to work in an independent coal mine running water to the older workers. The mine was unregulated by state or federal law. The shaft was supported with tree limbs for beams and the coal produced was high sulfur. The dust he breathed helped lead to his death from cancer when he was fifty-eight. He left the mine which closed when the shaft collapsed upon some of the miners. Dad was out of the mine on a water run at the time the supporting tree limbs gave way.

It was not just coal dust that contributed to his health problems. When he had to search out another job after the cave-in, he found work in a cement plant where he breathed in cement dust for several years. He lost that job when he had a heart attack at age thirty-three but had no health nor unemployment benefits from the company. He was out of work and bedridden for six months while my mother nursed him back to health. They were without outside income or insurance during that period. That is why my father went into insurance sales. He and my mother were strong supporters of workers’ rights who revered Labor Day just as they did July Fourth. They knew that law was essential to ensure safe working conditions. Such things as child labor laws, restricted work hours and days, health precautions and minimum wage requirements are not socialist ideals but are some of the building blocks of our economy. Labor Day is a celebration of America’s commitment to fairness, equality and good economics in the workplace.

Of course, as Peg points out, for about half of America’s workforce the bulk of their work is in their homes. Peg says it is ironic that we have a national holiday named Labor Day. She asks, “What about some fairness and equality in labor around the home and, what’s more, what about some recognition not just for ‘child labor’ but for the labor of having a child?” I should have seen this discussion coming when I casually mentioned my days of manual labor for hire.

According to Peg, Mother’s Day is a fine recognition of mothers but flowers once a year just doesn’t cut it. “Where’s the beef?” she asks. “Where is the minimum wage for round-the-clock cleaning, cooking, laundry, deliveries, nursing, sewing, yard work, gardening, child care, carpooling, schedule maintenance, bookkeeping, counseling and furnishing a sympathetic sounding board for every hurt feeling? And what about some time off occasionally? How about some time alone with peace and quiet and a cool drink that somebody else brings to me?”

Well, Gentle Reader, you most likely fall on whichever side of this one-way discussion your gender dictates. So, for now, I plan to change the subject and return to a topic I may be able to discuss without interruption, that is, Labor Day. Oh, not the one Peg is on about, but the one declared by President Grover Cleveland in 1894. So here goes.

Peg got agitated as we watched numerous male politicians on television exhort the wonders of the American, mostly male, workers whose harsh working conditions in the 19th and 20th centuries caused the birth of Labor Day. When it came to Peg’s complaints about work in the home, I felt duty bound to point out that husbands were responsible for much of her complained about female labors. After all, someone has to wear the clean clothes, eat the food and watch the kids play soccer and baseball. It is not all beer and TV you know. And if anyone had ever asked men to have the kids, who is to say we might not have considered it.

Further, most men have no problem with wearing the same comfortable t-shirt and Levi’s for a week or so. And on top of that, beer and chips have plenty of nutritional value to sustain men through football season. I told Peg, gently, that she was being disingenuous in her analysis of the significance of Labor Day. Labor Day for male workers was much like the right to vote for women. While women were wearing white, marching and singing songs about freedom, we men were busy gathering at bars talking about seeking fair working conditions. Men gladly organized for shorter work weeks and safer working conditions as women sought not just the right to vote, but also better working conditions and fair and equal treatment everywhere. The two movements fed off the synergy of one another and, together, made life better for both men at work and women at home and work.

Of course, those intertwined crusades for justice made our country better for us all. So, I guess if Peg thinks Labor Day is truly about all labor, I will, in the spirit of home harmony, agree. After all, I’m getting hungry and the game’s about to start on tv and I’m hoping Peg will bring me chips and a beer.

Hell Hath No Fury!

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Abigail Adams (1744-1818) was the wife of our second president, John Adams, and the mother of our sixth, John Quincy Adams. She wielded great influence over both but could not secure for women the right to vote. Her effort in the cause of female rights is exemplified by the following excerpt from one of her numerous letters to John while he was deeply involved in the Continental Congress:

“- I long to hear that you have declared an independency [from Great Britain] – and by the way in the new Code of Laws [The Declaration of Independence and new Articles of the Confederation] which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Representation.” (April 1776) 

A mere 144 years later most American women who were twenty-one years or older got the right to vote when the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920. However, in the meantime there was hell to pay for a lot of people who forgot the aphorism, “Hell Hath No Fury Like Women Scorned!” (from a 1697 English play by William Congreve, 1670-1729). Perhaps John Adams and his fellow Founding Fathers, they were all men at the Continental Convention, should have listened. Perhaps they might have saved the United States 144 years of angst and saved themselves many nights on the couch.

It is not as if women, and a lot of men too, were not struggling mightily for many years to give females equality. Such courageous heroines as Dolly Madison (1768-1849), Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) and Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) were marching lecturing, writing and enduring social, political and even physical danger in the cause of female suffrage. And in my own family my grandmother, who had no right to vote until she was well beyond 21, instilled in my mother, who well remembered when women could not vote, the debt she and other women owed to those pioneers. The best way to repay it was to exercise their dearly bought franchise. My 87-year-old sister Janie was imbued with this burning ardor as is my wife, Peg, who is not 87 but whose dearly departed mother lit that same flame in her.

My sister is a testament to how sacred many women, and many men also, hold the right to vote. Janie has been diagnosed with a slowly progressing but debilitating illness that many would have called uncle to before now. However, I am confident nothing will prevent her from participating in an election that might result in our first female president. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote that I bet included Janie’s. But she and her distaff cohorts now have another chance. I have no doubt my beloved, and committed sister will make it to November 05 and, hopefully well beyond, the medical folks are of the opinion that they have no opinion. “It will be what it will be”, they say.

I think it may turn out that Peg’s mother, my mother and even our grandmothers and great grandmothers, all of whom have gone onto their rewards, may find some way to join Janie and Peg at the polls November 05, 2024, only 248 years after Abigail’s entreaty to John. Of course, many will exercise their rights in support of their contemporary female hopefuls but many women will vote for men on the ticket. And many men will freely vote for the fairer sex but will also support the men on the ballots.

In other words, gender will no longer be, and should never have been, a determining factor in either choosing a candidate or having the right to make such a choice. Congratulations to all of us for no longer basing our vital political selections on sex, no matter what that designation may be. Abigail should be beaming wherever she is.

Equal Protection

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CNN reports that Americans’ confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court:

“[I]s at its lowest ebb in terms of public opinion in the history of Gallop polling.”

CNN attributes much of this lack of faith in the competence and integrity of the Court to the overruling of Roe vs. Wade in 2022. Then, even three members of the Court publicly dissented and accused the six-member majority of playing politics. Justices Breyer, Kagan and Sotomayor dissented in Dobbs v. Jackson that overruled Roe and stated:

“Today, the proclivities of individuals rule. The Court departs from its obligation to faithfully and impartially apply the law.” 

The essence of the dissenters’ warning was that the majority was denying options to America’s female population in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. A similar issue is the gravamen of the current issue before the Supreme Court in the matter of whether the 14th Amendment can be used to deny Donald Trump the right to run for president. Or, as is more important, whether the federal or each state’s government can deny American citizens the right to choose whether to vote for him.

People on both sides of Trump’s possible candidacy raise the alarm that our democracy is in peril if Trump is or is not allowed to run. Many who lost confidence in the Court over the denial of a “Woman’s right to choose” are sounding the siren against Trump’s choice to run. And many who celebrated the loss of Roe’s protections of a woman’s options in maternity matters, are up-in-arms at the prospect of denying Trump the right to run.

What Americans are saying by their low opinions of the Supreme Court validates both sides’ fears that our democracy may be teetering. For the essence of democracy is freedom of choice. When the U.S. Supreme Court addresses the matter of Colorado’s position that its voters cannot be trusted to make their own choices, we will all be watching. Perhaps we will find that regardless of how the Court decides Trump’s fate, the canary in the coal mine of democracy will be at risk. Because we all believe that everyone should have the freedom to choose what we do. And our government’s duty, especially the Supreme Court’s, is to guarantee no one has the power to deny others their right to make a different choice. Nowhere is that bedrock of our democracy more crucial than in free and open elections.