James M. Redwine

democracy

Living Law of a Democratic Society

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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”

Coach Cignetti, The Philosopher King

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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”

The End of Days

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What makes life worth living? The ability to choose. If humans cannot choose what they do, then we are as livestock. When Americans travel to some foreign countries we are often perplexed by the reluctance of many of their citizens to voice their true opinions or openly protest the actions of their governments. One of the greatest values of foreign travel is the appreciation Americans discover of our freedom in America to say what we truly believe without fear.

So, when violence is perpetrated against Americans in America for speaking their minds, it jars our collective psyches. We may not agree with a speaker’s politics, religion, philosophy or choice of sports teams, but our First Amendment gives others the right to their expressions as well as our right to air our opposition. Our 249 years of free speech is why we will likely make it to our 250th birthday.

Our nation has often had to struggle to cling to this most important of democracy’s fundamental rights. We have survived a Civil War, McCarthyism, civil rights battles over gender, age, voting, foreign entanglements and countless other tears in the fabric of our rights to choose and freely express our true opinions.

It may seem the current atmosphere of attempts to silence unwanted different positions is unique. That is not correct. Our fledgling country survived a deadly duel between Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury, and sitting Vice-President, Aaron Burr, on July 11, 1804.

America has a long and varied history of violence against people for their political views. We have struggled through presidents Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John Kennedy being assassinated. Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy was killed while campaigning and several other presidents and candidates have had assassination attempts made against their lives: George Wallace, Theodore Roosevelt and Donald Trump to name but three.

There have been numerous assassination attempts made against other sitting presidents: Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. It is apparent that public service can be dangerous. Also, numerous plots against other American politicians have been both foiled and carried out. Being a public figure in America, especially one with strong views on emotional subjects, seems to bring out the worst in some people who wish to silence free expression.

Of course, in our contemporary society, our national media and others do not hesitate to assert that the most recent violence against someone else’s right to choose is the death knell of our democracy. These pronouncements are often coupled with diatribes against whatever political position is represented as in opposition to the attacked speaker’s political philosophy.

We do and should mourn and regret any violence against a public figure, such as Charlie Kirk, who may have been attacked simply because of his or her strong views, whatever they are. However, to predict our country’s demise based on attempts to quell freedom of expression is not supported by our long history of political violence. Draconian responses to horrific incidents of violence may be themselves quite damaging to our right to choose and, per force, to our democracy.

Food Fight

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President Trump spoke to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, March 04, 2025 for 99 minutes. His entrance to and exit from the podium each took about 15 minutes. The Cabinet, the Supreme Court and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were in attendance as were invited guests, members of the media and numerous interested observers. The proceedings were telecast to the world by several media outlets who commentated on the events. The Democratic Party’s selected responder, Senator Elissa Slotkin, spoke briefly after President Trump.

As the President entered the chamber numerous Democrat senators and house members turned their backs, displayed custom designed placards with anti-MAGA comments and did not applaud; virtually all Republican members applauded incessantly, cheered and arose to stand many times. On television, the effect was as if one-half of attendees were at the Super Bowl and the other half were at a funeral. The gathering looked like a combination of sycophants and official witnesses at an execution who alternated between tossing roses and brickbats.

My reaction was to be rhetorically reminded of food fights at summer camp. My guess is the only reason there was no general tossing of rotten eggs is due to the price. My overarching impression was: surely there is a better way for members of our national government to interact concerning issues. I will suggest a couple: The Executive Branch could remain in the West Wing while both houses of the Legislative Branch submit proposed bills for the President’s consideration. The Supreme Court could remain stoic unless called upon to resolve a Constitutional issue. The military could and should remain at each of their designated posts until and unless America needs defending as determined by Congress and the President.

There is no good reason to subject anyone to the burlesque show that taxpayers are paying trillions to endure. If Tuesday night was democracy in action, perhaps we need, at least, less action. I call for no more “Joint Sessions” of any kind. As our mothers made clear, “If you cannot play nice, you will not play”.

A Teetering Balance

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Our federal democracy is seen as having three equal branches that keep our democracy by equally asserting restraints on one another. The Legislative Branch plays its part by having 435 representatives elected for 2-year terms by citizens throughout the country along with 100 senators elected for 6-year terms. These just over 500 individuals have many functions but they really have only one power, providing or restricting funds to themselves and to the other two branches of government, the Executive and Judicial Branches.

 The Executive Branch has thousands of functionaries but its most powerful executive is the President who directly and indirectly heads the military and countless other divisions of that diverse branch. Each of those often nameless bureaucracies has untold, often nameless, functionaries whose functions may hold the key to whether our government functions.

The Judicial Branch is easy to generally designate but much more difficult for the populace and the other two branches to corral as the Judicial Branch has generally defined itself since Marbury v. Madison in 1803. In fact, the Judicial Branch jealously and vigorously spends much of its time struggling to make sure the other two branches do not infringe on its powers, the chief of which is to define what the law allows the other two branches to do.

This theory of a three equal and separate foundation of our democracy works well as long as the powers of each branch remain truly separate and fairly balanced and each branch is composed of greatly dispersed functionaries. It is not a novel observation that our great democracy has remained democratic, mostly, because it remains diverse, dispersed and divided. When power becomes concentrated in a particular individual or individuals or branch, democracy suffers and internecine competitions may arise. Such theoretical and rhetorical battles can, as our Civil War proved, break out into real battles as one or two or even all three of the branches seek dominance.

Currently, we have members of each branch asserting efforts to imprint upon our whole country the vision of a few executives, followed by a few judges, both entities being subject to the status of financial hostages from a powerful few in the Legislative Branch. Now, some may analyze our current imbroglio as evidence our three-branch theory is simply working itself out in practice. That could be true. However, I hypothesize our Founding Fathers may have neglected the Fourth Branch of our social/governmental structure, the citizenry. Normally we have an electorate that, while unhappy perhaps, still finds a way to “soldier on”.

Our current social intercourse pits about one-half of America against the other half, sort of like the times of theDred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857 that led to the Civil War. Much as when a large portion of the United States agreed with the U.S. Supreme Court that African Americans were not citizens while another large portion disagreed. Many Americans today either agree or disagree with Birthright Citizenship and several other issues. One President and at least one federal judge come down on opposite sides of this citizenship issue and probably several others.

Such matters being seen diametrically opposite by each of two of our branches and both branches awaiting input from the Legislative and more importantly the public, creates a situation where our national soul may be at war with itself. What is called for is much more equal and reasonable input from each branch, especially that Fourth Branch, the populace.

70 X 7

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Peter eventually made it to the rank of saint; although he may have paid a heavy price for it. Peter was uncouth but Jesus stated he was the foundation of Jesus’ church. According to the New Testament, Jesus and Peter had many one-on-one conversations about theological matters, including forgiveness. In Matthew, Ch. 18, vs. 15-21, Peter asked Jesus, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.”

In other words, both Donald Trump and Hunter Biden are clothed with a robe of get out of jail free cards based on our Constitution’s Presidential Pardon Power. Oklahoma’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters, is not correct; America was not founded on Biblical principles but on principles of the European Enlightenment. Its army was led by George Washington who owned slaves and its Constitution was drafted by fellow slave owner James Madison who was Washington’s staunchest supporter. Washington’s physical presence and Madison’s great mental prowess were two of the main building blocks of our country. The President’s Pardon Power was inserted into the Constitution, probably, because most of the Founding Fathers who had a foundation in the history of the monarchies of Europe expected George Washington to become America’s first king and the Pardon Power was most likely a vestige of the European “Divine Right of Kings” to have the “Final Say” in matters calling for mercy. Instead, we might seek guidance from our Founding Fathers and such other secular authorities as Professor Joseph Campbell who taught mythology and literature at Sarah Lawrence College for many years. Unfortunately, Professor Campbell passed away in 1987, but in his 1972 book Myths to Live By at pages 188-189 Campbell wrote:

…. “The modern Western concept of a legal code is not of a list of unassailable divine edicts {such as the Code of Hammurabi or the Ten Commandments for examples} but of a rationally contrived, evolving compilation of statutes, shaped by fallible human beings in council, to realize rationally recognized social (and therefore temporal) aims. We understand that our laws are not divinely ordained; and we know also that no laws of any people on earth ever were.”

Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump must navigate America’s Constitution where Article II, §2, clause 1 provides, “The President shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in cases of Impeachment.”

Pardons are granted by democratically elected Presidents. Over the years thousands of pardons have been granted. President Biden has pardoned his own son after repeatedly and publicly stating he would not. Donald Trump may pardon numerous January 06, 2020 defendants after repeatedly and publicly stating he would. Some people find both Presidents’ actions repugnant. If so, they may work to change the people-made Constitution or work to elect somebody else or impeach whomever the country has elected. After all, our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us a democracy based on free will.