James M. Redwine

Abraham Lincoln

A Re-Birth of Independence

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July 04, 1776 was the birth of the United States of America. Our Birth Certificate is the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure those rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Were the men who signed this document naïve? Did they not recognize that these words would ring hollow to slaves, indigenous peoples, women and minorities? Of course not! Our Founders are called founders not because they established the only government in world history that guaranteed these principles, but because they dreamed of building such a nation. And the first giant step was to separate America from the monarchy of Great Britain.

It has taken 250 years of blood, sweat and tears to free many whose rights were only words in 1776. But the Declaration was of an ideal towards which to struggle. Nothing was given; each element of the American Dream has been slowly, and by fits and starts, achieved through reliance on our Founders’ vision and great sacrifice. We have much left to accomplish, but we have steadily progressed toward our ideals of a nation based on true democratic government.

As President Abraham Lincoln declared at Gettysburg in 1863, the United States would have a new birth of freedom and that “…[G]overnment of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth”. The Civil War was the throes of our second birth of independence. It led our nation to those magnanimous ideals of “malice towards none and charity for all” that laid the foundation in the hearts of Americans that guided us to the Marshall Plan after WWII and leadership in humanitarian beneficence throughout the world from 1946 until we began to retreat from kindness into autocracy.

Immediately after WWII, thanks to trillions of dollars of U.S. aid and peaceful persuasion, America went from an isolationist self-centered nation to a beacon of hope across the earth. Then we began to lose our way so that now most of the planet sees us as simply a sycophant of the new country we helped establish in 1948, one we have supported without questioning its immoral hegemony and Zionism. The United States is now linked with Israel in aggressive wars of conquest and repeated genocides. How did we allow ourselves to go from a beacon of freedom to a symbol of oppression?

It began innocently enough with a desire to help Jewish minorities in Europe after WWI and especially WWII. Then Israel fell under the non-democratic Zionist government that took our foreign military and economic aid and repaid us by attacking our ship The Liberty in 1967 where Israel deliberately killed 34 of our sailors and wounded 171 more to hide their espionage upon America.

Next Israel used its Jewish American spy, Jonathon Pollard, to steal our nuclear secrets while we continued to supply Israel with diplomatic cover and aid. Ironically, Pollard is now a citizen of Israel who is running for a seat in the Knesset on a platform of Palestinian elimination from Gaza.

Just as our Declaration of Independence set forth King George III’s transgressions that justified our Revolution, we should acknowledge that Israel has repeatedly led America to engage in foreign wars in Iraq and elsewhere using false allegations that Saddam Hussein and others had weapons of mass destruction. Currently, Zionist Israel has falsely led us into repeatedly attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities while Israel controls the nuclear weapons that it stole from us.

However, the real damage that Israel has wreaked upon America is not just misapplication of the hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. aid, but the damage to our democratic ideals and our hard-won place among nations as a beacon to equal rights for all. The United States was a light to the world, but now is seen as a threat to attack whatever countries Israel wants to conquer. The world now links us to the actions of Israel, which is seen by most of the United Nations as a pariah country.

It is time to remember our Founder’s guidance and return to that great wisdom of President George Washington who warned us in his Farewell Address not to become passionately attached to any other country for, as President Washington said in 1796:

“…[N]othing is more essential than that permanent inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.

It is long past time for the United States to “dissolve the political bands which have connected” America and Israel. We need not treat Israel as an enemy, but we can have a relationship with Israel just as we treat equally all the nations of the world. We need to have a new birth of our ideals and re-take our place as the world’s preeminent democracy. To do so we must cease enabling Zionist Israel to represent to the world we condone or, worse, promote unequal treatment of all humanity.

Should one have questions as to the seriousness of the harm to America from our government’s unqualified loyalty to Israel over loyalty to our ideals, our nation’s top counterterrorism official, Joe Kent, just resigned in protest of the danger posed by Israel’s power over America’s war making policies. The Trump-appointed former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center wrote in his letter of resignation of March 17, 2026:

“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Over 60% of Americans oppose President Trump’s policy on Iran. However, according to President Trump, “Right now I’m at 99% in Israel. I could run for prime minister (of Israel)”. In the United States the President’s overall approval rating is 39% according to a new poll from FOX NEWS. And, President Trump publicly stated he might move to Israel and run for prime minister once his current term ends.

Our passionate attachment to Israel has cost us our hard-earned status as that “Shining City on the Hill” in world opinion. We have allowed ourselves to be misled from our ideals; it is past time for us to reclaim our rightful place among the true democracies of the earth and Declare our Independence from Israel. For although we are 250 years old, we are still too young to die, especially because we abdicated our core values.

For Reference Please See:

            The Passionate Attachment, America’s Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present (1992) by George Ball, former Under Secretary of State and formally America’s Ambassador to the United Nations; and,

            Assault on the Liberty (1979) by James M. Ennes, Jr.

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

Highly Resolved

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Peg getting the “Gavel Gamut” article typed, posted online and emailed on January 1, 2026. Photo by Jim Redwine

Abraham Lincoln published one of our nation’s solemn resolutions in his address at the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863. The over three thousand dead Union soldiers were the particular men Lincoln referenced that day. However, since President Lincoln’s main focus of the Civil War was to hold our country together, most likely he had in mind all the dead and wounded on both sides when he said:

“…[W[e here highly resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain…”

That resolution was not made for a New Year, but it was a noble hope for our country’s future. From 1863 until 1914 this goal was fractured by almost continuous death and destruction, such as the Indian removals, the Spanish American War and then “The War to End all wars”, World War I. After that final war, America fought WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, The Gulf War, Afghanistan, The Iraq War and so many conflicts most Americans cannot recount whom we have fought and are still fighting nor why. We are currently aiding and abetting and directly involved in Palestine and Ukraine along with Venezuela and bellicose behavior bordering on armed conflicts with so many countries and groups even the cable news cannot keep up with them.

President Lincoln’s resolution for our country has gone the way my 2025 New Year’s Resolutions have. I dug through my devout promises to myself last year and find I do not need to address any new 2026 resolutions as, just like our government, the resolutions from 1863 until January 2026 will suffice.

Therefore, I resolve to give up on exercising more, saving more, losing more weight, being nicer, helping out around JPeg Osage Ranch more and restraining my penchant to gossip about politics. After all, not one of my 2025 ideas that I have offered to our leaders has even been acknowledged, much less implemented.

I, therefore, resolve my 2025 resolutions shall “perish from the earth” should anyone be interested.

Typical “script” Peg works from! Photo by Peg Redwine

Leadership

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President Biden has one more week as president to help bind up our nation’s wounds. America’s electorate is almost evenly divided by MAGA supporters and anti-MAGA supporters. Going to a favorite coffee shop or pub has taken on a certain ennui for many of us who used to look forward to seeing friends and discussing timely issues. What used to be lively and enlightening conversations has morphed into dreaded exercises in avoiding issues of substance. The nation’s political discourse has devolved from constructive give and take to animus. Important issues are currently not worth the disappointment to risk discussing. Leadership is needed to encourage us all to open our minds so we can face many important issues that, if not faced, may do real harm to our country and perhaps others.

That is the premise behind the prescient article by Indiana University Law Professor Timothy William Waters published January 06, 2025 via Politico, four years after the incident at our capitol. Professor Waters calls for President Joe Biden to pardon the rioters as an act that would help bridge our nation’s great divide between MAGA and anti-MAGA. Such a magnanimous and courageous act would speak to both sides and could apply some healing balm to our fractious society.

I doubt Professor Waters believes his well-reasoned analysis of the dangers of a house divided is an original thought. Someone wise enough to advocate for such a brave act of leadership almost certainly is simply recommending a particular treatment for our ailing condition. Wise people have realized for thousands of years that peace is more constructive and less destructive than war. I do not know Professor Waters but his article is written as one that demonstrates an attitude of helpfulness not hubris.

From Jesus to Abraham Lincoln to Gerald Ford and many more, we humans have long known that “malice towards none and charity for all” is not behavior that is only good for those we disagree with but for us too. Such acts as the mean-spirited treatment of Germany after WWI that led to WWII versus the Marshall Plan that re-made Germany into an ally after WWII, teach us that vengeance is not only morally corrupt and selfish but ignorant and self-destructive.

 Pardons are to presidents what mediation, probation and parole are to courts. They acknowledge the sins but affirm the possibility of our nation of laws whose mission seeks redemption, not retribution. President Gerald Ford by his pardon of President Richard Nixon used his presidential pardon as it was intended. He helped bind our nation’s wounds at a time we sorely needed it. I realized this and wrote a Gavel Gamut column about it when President Ford died in 2007. I have included it as part of this column.

Perhaps Professor Waters’ article will encourage President Biden and possibly President Trump to show the same type of leadership President Ford did.

PARDON ME, PRESIDENT FORD
(Week of January 8, 2007)

President Gerald Ford died December 26, 2006.  In a life filled with public service, he will always be best known for his pardon of President Nixon in 1974.

President Nixon personally chose Gerald Ford to replace the disgraced Vice-President Spiro Agnew who resigned in 1973 amid disclosures of bribery while Agnew was Governor of Maryland.

Vice-President Ford served under President Nixon until Nixon resigned in August of 1974.  One month after President Nixon resigned, President Ford issued him a full pardon for any crimes he may have committed while president.

At the time, I and most Americans were calling for a complete investigation of the Watergate debacle and especially Nixon’s involvement in it.  It was a time of a media feeding frenzy and blood in the water.

President Ford took the unprecedented step of going personally before Congress and flatly stating that President Nixon and then Vice-President Ford had no deal to pardon Nixon if he would resign.

I recall how dubious I was when President Ford stated that he issued the pardon only to help our country to start healing from the loss of confidence caused by Watergate.

Yet, after a few months I began to have second thoughts about my initial reaction to the pardon.  I began to see how much courage it took for President Ford to go straight into the anti-Nixon firestorm sweeping the United States.

As a country, we were almost paralyzed by the partisan fighting at home and the War in Viet Nam.  We needed a new direction and a renewed spirit.

Surely President Ford with his twenty-two (22) years in Congress knew he was committing political suicide by not giving us our pound of flesh.  Still, he put his country first.  Of course, the country rewarded his sacrifice by booting him from office and electing President Jimmy Carter to replace him.

But during the campaign of 1976, when President Ford came to Evansville on April the 23rd, I took my son, Jim, out of school and we went to the Downtown Walkway to cheer the man who put country above self.

For while William Shakespeare may almost always get his character analysis right, when it came to President Ford, “The good he did lived after him.”   Julius Caesar, Act III, sc. ii.

Even President Carter, one of America’s most courageous and best former presidents said of President Ford:

“President Ford was one of the most admirable public servants I have ever known.”

And when it came to the pardon of President Nixon, Senator Ted Kennedy, while admitting that he had severely criticized the pardon in 1974, said that he had come to realize that:

                                    “The pardon was an extraordinary act of courage that historians recognize was truly in the national interest.”

So, President Ford, since even your political opponents came to appreciate your courage and goodness, I am confident that you have long ago “pardoned” all of us who doubted you back when we needed your leadership.

Whose Birthday Is It?

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As I write this column the Weather App on my cell phone says the actual temperature is 98 degrees Fahrenheit with a heat index making it feel like 108 degrees. There is no breeze but that’s okay. If there were, it would simply baste our skin as though we were a slow crusting brisket. I ask you, Gentle Reader, “Why July Fourth?” Does not each of the twelve months have a Fourth? For example, the merry month of May or the crisp, invigorating month of October each has a perfectly good Fourth. And neither has a heat index of 108 degrees! Were our Founding Fathers so fond of their wool frock coats they were impervious to July’s guarantee of a reprise of Joan of Arc’s demise? What was Thomas Jefferson thinking as his Sons of Liberty compatriots dumped the tea into Boston’s Harbor on December 16, 1773? Why not fire off his written volleys against King George III then, when it was cool?

 Our rhetorical path today is an examination of the date of our country’s birthday and how we might celebrate it each year without getting suntan lotion and sweaty grit mixed into our barbeque. To me the solution is as simple as the whole country ignoring the gamesmanship of celebrating George Washington’s and Abraham Lincoln’s birthdays not on February 22 and February 12 as we did all of my school years. Why, with the stroke of a Congressional pen, voila, we now have President’s Day every year on the third Monday in February! I say, hooray! Now how about the Fourth of …?

 Many people throughout the world have celebrated the presumed birthday of Jesus. Yet, no one truly knows for sure when Jesus was born. We do know over the past 2,000 years more than one date has been chosen for Christ’s date of birth. For example, many people in Europe celebrate Christmas on January 07 because they follow the Julian calendar set by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C.

However, in 1582 Pope Gregory developed his calendar. The Julian Calendar and the Gregorian Calendar each gave a different day for Christmas. One was on the 24th or 25th of December and the other gave January 07. Does it matter? Apparently not. I say if the world can pick an arbitrary date for the birth of Jesus, we can re-set the birth of America to a friendlier clime. I respectfully suggest October 04 every year starting in 2025.

On a personal topic, one of my earlier Gavel Gamut columns drew the thoughtful attention of a reader, Mr. Jerry Butterbaugh. Mr. Butterbaugh, thank you for taking the time to read the column and thank you for your interesting perspective. You respectfully presented a different point of view without casting aspersions. Would that our beloved country as a whole could discuss our many serious issues in the same manner. Your points were clear and helpful. I appreciate them.

Also, since my wife Peg is about the only reader I can consistently rely upon, and that only because she has to type and post them, your response was most welcome.

Always Memorial Day

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Memorial Day honors the memory of all who have made America. It is appropriate that we do so, for in remembering our ancestors we perpetuate their countless blessings to us. Of course, Memorial Day pays special homage to all of our departed veterans who sacrificed so much, some even their lives, so that we can live ours in peace and plenty.

Our best-known Memorial Address was delivered before America had declared a special day to honor our departed. President Abraham Lincoln spoke for about eleven minutes on November 19, 1863 at the battlefield in Gettysburg where he honored all who had served on July 1, 1863.

Lincoln did not honor just Union soldiers but included the Confederate veterans, without naming either side. President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was a preview of his Second Inaugural Address of March 4, 1865 in which, in about 700 words, Lincoln set forth the best way for our nation to honor the sacrifices of the departed:

“With malice toward none,
With charity for all,
….
Let us strive … to bind up
The nation’s wounds;
….
To do all which may achieve
and cherish a just and a lasting peace,
Among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Lincoln’s two short addresses would be good balm for helping to assuage our current attitude of ill will and remind us of what is our duty to our ancestors, especially our veterans, to our country and to what we claim to be the American ideals. Perhaps we should Memorialize these.

Although my short poem to veterans that I gave as a speech on July 23, 2008 most certainly does not belong with the pantheon of Abraham Lincoln’s magnanimous words, I respectfully offer it in the hope it includes thoughts our veterans and those who love them would find comforting:

“WELL DONE 

At Lexington and Concord, the young blood began to flow.
At the Battle of New Orleans, muskets killed our cousins and our foes.

 At the Alamo and Buena Vista, we stood to the last man.
At Shiloh, Chickamauga and Gettysburg, brothers’ blood soaked the sand.

At San Juan Hill and when the Maine went down, our soldiers never flinched.
At Verdun and by the Marne, a million men died in the trench.

 At D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, after Hiroshima’s mushroom clouds,
At Incheon Landing the forgotten war brought many more funeral shrouds.

 At Khe Sanh and during Tet, we held our own and more,
At the Battle of Medina Ridge, our Gulf War warriors upheld the Corps.

 At Sinjar, Mosul, and places with strange names,
Our Iraqi War veterans now earn their fame.

 In uniforms, our citizens have served well everyone.
Today, we here proclaim to them our solemn praise: Well done!”

Tribal Court

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Chief Joseph

After forty years of serving as a judge in the white man’s courts I was recently honored to be asked to serve as a Special Judge by appointment of the Court of Appeals of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community of the Mohican Nation. The appointment of an outside judge was necessary because the case involves questions of tribal membership and the regularly sitting Native American judges for the Tribe had conflicts of interest due to the judges’ personal connections to the issues.

As I had no experience with Native American law, I had to first familiarize myself with the particular Tribe’s particular Constitution, procedural rules and statutes that applied to my assigned case. What I found was the bedrock issues for the Indian judicial system are remarkedly similar to the legal system I learned in law school and sat as a judge in. When I looked closely at tribal law, I came to the same conclusion attorney Abraham Lincoln did. Lincoln said the primary purpose of all courts and lawyers should be to:

“Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker, the lawyer (judge) has a superior opportunity of being a good person.”

If one reads some newspaper editors or listens to cable news anchors, he or she might conclude compromise is anathema to the American body politic’s well-being. Conflict and strife with unyielding single mindedness are the watchwords for national media and federal, and many state, office holders. This way of addressing our personal and national problems seems rather discordant when a majority of Americans apparently believe their preferred law giver said:

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.”
Matthew 5:9

It is ironic that those, many of whom champion Jesus the ultimate practitioner of compromise, so often call for obstinance and conflict. I guess the concept of situational ethics passes them by.

What I discovered in researching tribal law was what legal scholars have known since the days of Socrates: all courts are here to resolve controversies. That is their only charter, not to provide fodder for the gossip mill or entertainment for the afternoon or late-night talk show crowd. Judges, whether in the white man’s legal system or the Indian’s, have one main mission, that is to help people help themselves, if they can, to make peace.

I grew up on an Indian reservation but my experience with the kids I played ball with, fought with and dated was they were just like me. Therefore, I was not surprised Native American courts had the same mission as the one I presided over in the white man’s world. On the other hand, it is comforting to think should I for some reason get caught up in a tribal legal system it will be about the same as the social system I have always known. And I am glad America is finally getting around to recognizing what should have always been the case.

The tribal law I researched reminded me of laws enacted from the times of ancient Rome, ancient Greece and English and French legal philosophers, such as John Locke and Voltaire and American Founding Fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

Another great philosophical legal leader was Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce (1840-1904). Chief Joseph engaged in peaceful resistance until he was forced to surrender which he did based on certain representations from the white man’s government. Those representations were not honored. However, Chief Joseph upheld his end of the peace agreement and he was greatly admired as a peacemaker.

Chief Joseph’s legal philosophy is remarkedly similar to that of our earlier mentioned judge: Jesus said, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  Chief Joseph said:

“If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace. Treat all men alike. Give them the same law.”

As a tribal judge, even if only for one case, I feel quite at home with this court mission statement from Chief Joseph.