James M. Redwine

First Amendment

The Public Forum

by Leave a Comment

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.

The End of Days

by Leave a Comment

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.

What Is In Control?

by Leave a Comment

One of the first lectures I received in law school was about how jury trials had changed over about 2,500 years; they hadn’t. According to my law professor, if we budding attorneys had walked into the courtroom in Athens for the trial of Socrates in 399 B.C., we would have easily understood the proceeding. Socrates was charged with corrupting Athenian youth with his views on the prevalent religion and government. He was convicted by a jury of about 500 citizens. Socrates was prosecuted by three senators and he defended himself. In other words, that court of over 2,000 years ago functioned like most courts of the 21st century, until the advent of smart telephones, artificial intelligence and rapidly changing electronic technology.

Unlike the practice of medicine, according to our law professor, that a physician of modern times would not even recognize, until recently the legal profession stoically struggled to deliver justice about the same way our Stone Age progenitors did. As science reached for the stars, the Star Chamber was right at home with the law. Most lawyers, judges and juries sought just verdicts, but often did so with quill pens, arcane fixtures and cloistered proceedings. Well, those honored, if often questioned, days have recently crashed upon the shoals of instant and ubiquitous information and misinformation. And much as the art world and the defense industry are wringing their hands and racing to keep up with machines gone mad, the legal profession is struggling to preserve the First Amendment’s guarantees of Freedom of Speech and the Press along with the Sixth Amendment’s guarantees of Due Process and a Fair Trial.

For thousands of years societies have confidently relied upon jurors to hear cases without being influenced by prejudicial information from outside of the court. Today, judges cannot just order jurors to not read newspapers, or listen to radio or television stories about a case. Jurors in 2025 are just like virtually every other child, teenager, adult and elderly person; everyone has a smart phone to which they are addicted. All the judicial admonishments judges can think of will not defeat the deep-seated need by jurors to “tune in and turn on” and, most likely buy into, the often incorrect information about practically anything, including “facts” about an on-going case.

The Founding Fathers most feared centralized governmental power and believed the best defense to it was for the public to have almost unfettered Freedom of Speech and for the media to be almost immunized from governmental restraint. Of course, America’s legal system has adapted many times to changes in our society. It will surely find ways to deal with the internet. However, the age-old reliance on the omnipotence and wisdom of the trial judge’s instructions has already become as much of a relic as the pyramids. And, just as the pyramids still inspire us, our historically provident legal system probably will too.

However, we in the legal profession must face the reality that Facebook and its ilk have to be dealt with because the populace will not stand for them to be destroyed. Surely, if I were back in that first law school class today, the professor would evince a different perspective on 2025’s legal system.

You Shall Know the Truth & the Truth Will Set You Free (John 8:32)

by Leave a Comment

Jesus was born in Palestine and did much of his teaching there about 2,000 years ago. The words Jesus spoke were so offensive to the chief Jewish scribes and priests they called upon the Romans to crucify him even though he had committed no crime except, “He stirs up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee even to this place” (Luke 23:5). Actually he was just calling for peace and justice.

The Chief Pharisee, Joseph Caiaphas, and his ruling Judaic council charged Jesus with heresy and asked the Romans to try him. The Roman rulers, Pontius Pilate and King Herod, could find no fault in his behavior and planned to release him. Pilate then called together the chief priests and the religious rulers and the populace, to tell them Jesus would be released. “But they were urgent, demanding with loud cries that he should be crucified” (Luke 22:6-25). So, Jesus was crucified for expressing views those in power in the Sanhedrin found offensive. Those eye witness accounts as reported in the Bible come from the famous authors of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all of whom were Jewish. Ergo, the knee jerk response of contemporary society and Trump’s White House that they were being anti-semitic would lie fallow.

The Romans, much like those today in American academia who caved to the financial threats from the Trump Administration, just washed their hands of the matter (Matthew 27:11-26). However, the shame of shirking the most sacred duty of a college, that is, preserving the free flow of ideas, cannot be so easily cleansed.

Another Palestinian activist, Mahmoud Khalil, who advocates in America today for peace and justice in Palestine and Israel has not been charged with any crime, but is currently imprisoned in America for exercising his First Amendment right to free speech, principally during his tenure at Columbia University. He was arrested by the power of President Donald Trump’s Executive Branch that disagrees with Khalil’s calls for peace in Gaza and an end to the slaughter by the Zionists of over 50,000 Palestinians, mainly civilians. Khalil’s peaceful support for the resistance of the Palestinian people from 1948 until now to the military actions and occupations by Israel in Palestine, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and Yemen is at odds with the positions of the Trump and Zionist Israeli administrations.

The myopic view of Israel’s Zionistic actions over the past seventy-seven years is reminiscent of lessons from Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 fairy tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes. Just as a narcissistic ruler is conned into parading naked before an adoring crowd until an innocent child exposes his vanity, Presidents Biden and Trump find no fault with the Zionists in Israel. That is the very purpose of the First Amendment, to expose the truth.

When our government will brook no dissent nor even consider opposing views, great harm and even greater injustice may occur. Protests and free speech in a non-violent academic atmosphere are vital to preserving our democracy. Just as our Founders feared, a silenced majority leads to tyranny from a minority.

Many Jewish people at Columbia University, and in much of the rest of the world, agree with Khalil or, at a minimum, believe he has the right to peaceably, publicly express his views. In America, Free Speech is not anti-semitic or pro-Palestinian; it is an essential element to preserving our democracy. As the Jewish and Roman rulers of 2,000 years ago discovered, power abused can lead to rights denied and even a country being destroyed. 1948 might have been a new beginning for Israel, but it may not survive the Zionist dream of total conquest of its neighbors in the Middle East while being abetted by our government, much of the media and academia.

The First Amendment to our Constitution is first because our Founders knew it is vital to democracy. When our institutions sell their principles for money or succumb to fear of speaking the truth because they may be branded anti-semitic, we may eventually reap the whirlwind, perhaps even a nuclear one.

Thanks, Robert

by Leave a Comment

Last week my friend and fellow member of the Fourth Estate, Robert Smith, published a commentary on the appropriateness of mixing religion and government; it isn’t.

In adopting the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the 1776ers relied on the wisdom gained from thousands of years of bad experiences of religion being misused by those in power. It is no accident that Freedom of and from Religion and Freedom of Expression and the Press are joined:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

I realize those few of you who read this column already are aware of this bedrock of our democracy. Robert understands that also. He concluded his commentary with this thought:

“It just surprises me that something as basic as creating respectfully neutral spaces in public around intensely personal matters even needs to be explained.”

Of course, Robert has a right to be surprised that in America that was born by the midwifery of Freedom from Governmental interference with Freedom of Choice, anyone who is public-spirited enough to accept the responsibility of serving in any governmental function would violate his or her sacred oath by interjecting their personal religion into public, governmental matters. Most American adults have been weaned on years of formal and incidental realization that the surest way to harm Religious Liberty is by governmental force of any particular Faith.

So, because just as Robert, I am amazed and concerned such issues still require mention in a newspaper, I will just say, Thank you, Robert!

A Slippery Slope

by Leave a Comment

At December fifth’s House Committee on Education and the Workforce, presidents of Harvard, Penn and M.I.T. answered questions about free speech matters at their universities. One should first question what our government was doing micro-managing private speech and assemblage at non-governmental institutions. Another dangerous issue was raised when a wealthy alumnus of Penn threatened to withdraw a one hundred-million-dollar donation if Penn did not fire its president who did not testify as the alumnus approved. President Elizabeth Magill and Penn bowed to the combined pressure of politics and money; she and the Chairman of Penn’s Board almost immediately resigned. The Black female president of Harvard, Dr. Claudine Gay, and the Jewish female president of M.I.T., Dr. Sally Kornbluth, have not, as yet, stepped down. Congress took umbrage at the three university presidents’ responses to a hypothetical question about possible antisemitism on their campuses. Each president stated free speech is vital on college campuses and all speech and protest must be judged within the context it is made. Congress was offended by the failure to unequivocally prohibit the hypothetical call for Jewish genocide without regard to the circumstances and context in which such hypothetical speech might be uttered.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution seeks to guarantee all the rights set forth in the Constitution:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Our Founders knew Free Speech is essential to preserving all of our rights. As former slave Frederick Douglass stated:

“Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist.”

And to paraphrase my fellow columnist, Benjamin Franklin, who published Poor Richard’s Almanac, freedom of speech is the freedom that secures all the others. Of course, Franklin was concerned as an individual citizen, a working member of the press and an influential Founding Father.

Congresspersons who set themselves up as the arbiters of speech and assembly at private universities may see themselves as protecting students from hateful speech and protests. But it is the core mission of our colleges and universities to provide forums where differing views of important issues may be aired and debated. Students go on to be future presidents of other colleges or even of the United States. They will become members of the Supreme Court and Congress and will serve throughout our nation on school boards and in local, state and federal government. It is imperative that they learn to challenge the status quo and themselves. A good starting point is the First Amendment.