James M. Redwine

George Washington

Join or Die

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The Haudenosaunee, the democratic confederation of the Six Nations of Native Americans, had existed for centuries before Canasatego, their spokesperson, suggested the 13 colonies should form a similar arrangement. In 1754 Benjamin Franklin adopted the idea and even designed a flag with a snake cut into several pieces with the motto “Join or Die”. Eventually Canasatego’s advice was followed and Native Americans lost their lands. “Be careful what you wish for” or “No good deed goes unpunished”; either adage might apply.

These thoughts led the first of Ken Burns’ six-part PBS documentary of the American Revolution. Gentle Reader, if you did not watch it last week, I recommend you could not find a better use of twelve hours of your valuable time than pulling it up now on the PBS streaming app. My realization was how little I knew about the unlikely birth of the United States of America. Until last week my thought was, we Americans had had only one Civil War. I was ignorant of the animus among the colonies and our revered Founders. The revelations that the people who sacrificed so much and endured such hardships were actually people, much as people of today, was difficult to incorporate with my formal education and years of social experience and hearsay analysis.

I have spent many years sanguine with the core of America’s birth being a struggle for freedom by oppressed colonists against a repressive British monarchy. It was a clean, straight forward story requiring little nuance. I liked it and was comfortable in my beliefs; honor was the hallmark of the American Revolution.

After all, what words are more American than “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor”? Honor was the standard and such things as speculation in Indian lands as a motivation for revolution by such speculators as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were beyond the pale. However, in Ken Burns’ treatise, the historian Philip Deloria states, “I think the American Revolution was all about land”. And in support of this premise he cited the 1763 British Royal Proclamation that declared all the land west of the Appalachian Mountains off limits to white people for either settlement or speculation. This infuriated the colonists who cited Manifest Destiny and who came from a culture in which 2% of Britain’s population owned 66% of the land. Many colonists believed their only hope of ever owning land was to take it from the Native Americans west of the Appalachians.

And of course, there was that soaring marvelous language, “All men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights and among those are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. My formal schooling did not mention that the population “All men” did not include any women or non-white men nor did it mention the institution of slavery being practiced and jealously protected by many of the men who signed our glorious Declaration of Independence from the British crown.

So, was the American Revolution a straight forward story of good versus bad, of honor versus oppression, or was it vastly more complex? There was much to admire but, as with all human behavior, there are stains that should be acknowledged and learned from. Honor is not just a word; it is a cause. Honor encapsulates all vital human aspirations of honesty, integrity, generosity, humility, fairness, courage and self-sacrifice. The Founders certainly displayed much honorable behavior.

However, as we should know our history so we can learn from it, it should be the full story so the right lessons are applied in our country’s life in our times. Knowing our heroes were human does not denigrate their achievements. It does help us seek the harder right and eschew the easier wrong. I respectfully submit the story of the American Revolution is best celebrated with truth.

Father Knows Best

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Back in the days when TV was black and white the show Father Knows Best starring Robert Young and Jane Wyatt as father and mother Jim and Margaret Anderson dished up weekly lessons of morality and common sense. Father Jim could always be relied on to give thoughtful and caring analysis that mother Margaret would inculcate in their children. The show’s premise was based upon a family seeking and receiving sagacious advice from a respected father much as our nation had received from the Father of our country, George Washington.

Just as most of us have from time to time neglected our parents’ guidance to our chagrin, the United States has sometimes strayed from our Founders’ hard-earned wisdom to our mutual detriment. Our current fall from grace in the Middle East could use a stern parental lecture as set forth in Washington’s Farewell Address of 1796. Among his thoughtful and prescient cautions to us were his observations on dangers to our own country from unjust and unwise foreign entanglements:

“Observe good faith and justice towards all nations, cultivate peace and harmony with all. … give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.

“…. Nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations (Iran?) and passionate attachments for ochers (Israel?) 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 its affection.”

Washington’s advice stands in sharp contrast to our long myopic view of the Zionists unjust actions towards the people who long inhabited the land that was created as Israel in 1948. America has always been the main supporter and enabler of what can no longer be denied as an effort by Zionists to eliminate Palestinians from their ancestral homes. And it is Zionism not Judaism that should be condemned.

Jewish people as all other peoples have the right to live in Israel or migrate to Israel if it is done according to international law and justice. There are countless Jewish people throughout the world, including in Israel, who believe the Zionists in Israel are both legally and morally wrong to prosecute a genocide against Palestinians. The trope of calling criticism of Zionist crimes antisemitism or of speaking or protesting against the Israeli government’s actions is just an attempt by Zionists to divert attention from their immoral actions.

As for America, we should consider the wisdom of our Founders and the special place America has held in the world since WWII. We should stand up and call out the “passionate attachment” we have allowed to subvert our basic principles. It is never too late to do the right thing.

Perhaps a simpler guide than Father Washington’s sage advice might be an old adage about self-reflections. If one person calls us an ass, we can laugh it off, but if almost everyone does so, then we better look in the mirror. Such is America’s denial of its immoral enablement of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. We may not be dropping the bombs on innocent children, but we are providing them along with the existential political threat to use our military might to support Zionist atrocities.

We appear blind to the evil Zionists call self-defense. Starving civilians, destroying hospitals, murdering journalists and stealing land is genocide, not self-preservation or any type of legitimate response to any former attack. As for America, we should not take up arms against Israel, but we should cease aiding Israel to take military action beyond its borders. And its borders should be those established by the United Nations in 1948.

 The United States and Great Britain were the main reason there is an Israel. We found reasons to create Israel in the great evil done to Jewish people by WWII Germany. But that evil was not done by Palestinians or Arabs or Iranians. Such sympathy was certainly understandable. However, to commit another great wrong out of sympathy just doubles the evil; it does not expiate it.

America should first cease our complicity in this modern-day holocaust then we should assert our world leadership to help re-build and realign Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Our decades long culpability in this tragedy and our unique status and stature demand that America stands for what we say we believe and what George Washington called for. Peace and stability are possible in the Middle East; however, it will not come from bombs but from the principles we hold dear.

Independence Day Jeopardy

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Photo by Peg Redwine.

John Adams, our second president, and Thomas Jefferson, our third president, were great friends who became estranged for years but reconciled before they both died on July 4, 1826. Each was an attorney who championed individual liberty and civil rights. Adams believed the date of America’s birth was July 2, 1776, the date the Continental Congress voted for independence. Jefferson thought our birthday was July 4, 1776, the date the Declaration of Independence was signed. Both Founding Fathers declared we should celebrate our founding with special activities.

Jefferson was the first president to host a July 4 commemoration at the White House. Jefferson wrote about Independence Day, “For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.”

Adams sent a letter to his wife Abigail on July 3, 1776 in which he declaimed:

“I am apt to believe that it (July 2, 1776) will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival.

…

It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews (shows), Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illumination from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

My family, and most likely yours too Gentle Reader, have carried out these patriotic demands for as long as we have been fortunate enough to do so. For more than the past twenty years my family has gathered around July 4 and reveled in the wonder of the United States of America by engaging in a hotly contested Independence Jeopardy game.

Photo by Peg Redwine

This year our son Jim portrayed Benjamin Franklin, my nephews Dennis and David Redwine, donned the colonial frocks of Uncle Sam and George Washington and teams of relatives vied to earn the Independence Day Jeopardy championship. The competition was fierce and only barbeque and copious desserts could assuage those who came in out of first.

It is always good to get our large and close-knit family together, especially over a hotly contested game of colonial history. It is of special meaning in our current atmosphere of political upheaval to remind ourselves what truly matters. So, happy birthday to all of us whether you agree with Adams or Jefferson or choose some other special time around our founding in the first week of July, 1776.

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.

A Birthday Party

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Ben Franklin & George Washington. Photo by Peg Redwine

Ever since my mother’s three brothers and one of her three sisters returned home from serving in World War II my family has gathered for a Fourth of July reunion. While competing circumstances have caused some hiatuses over the last seventy-seven years, we have been fairly consistent in our celebration of life. We do what all families do at reunions, meet, eat and subconsciously soak in the subtle changes from childhood to absence.

Those changes are what John Denver wrote about in 1971 in his song Poems, Prayers and Promises:

♪ The days they pass so quickly now, nights are seldom long

Time around me whispers when it’s cold

The changes somehow frighten me, still I have to smile

It turns me on to think of growing old ♪

Denver, as I was, was born in 1943, therefore he was only 28 when he was contemplating aging. He died in a plane crash in 1997 so his early thoughts about growing old were prescient. When I listen to his young man’s song about encroaching old age I am impressed, and sobered, by his understanding of the physical and emotional aspects of aging. I do not recall even the vaguest concern of not being 28; I am now more aware.

Our current political debate is highlighted by President Biden’s age of 80 and former President Trump’s 77. Depending upon our partisan preferences we monitor each man’s speech and movements in a search for affirmation or condemnation of our hopes or fears for our nation. For although the United States just celebrated our 247th birthday, we Americans think of ourselves as a young, vibrant country that is always trying to perfect our union. The young John Kennedy is our ideal. We may need the wisdom sometimes brought by age but we crave the vitality often born of youth.

But age does not guarantee good judgment and youth may encourage recklessness. Each of us knows the angst of experiencing what Camelot’s Guinevere called for, and eventually obtained, “A day she would always rue”. Ben Franklin was 70 years old in 1776 and George Washington was 44. Most people would say both men had good judgment. Both showed wisdom and courage, two of the character traits we need in our leaders. Their age was not a factor. As John Denver concluded, “It’s been a good life all and all” and:

♪ How sweet it is to love someone, how right it is to care

How long it’s been since yesterday and what about tomorrow?

What about our dreams and all the memories we share? ♪

Well, back to our family’s Fourth of July Reunion. The singing was poignant, the bar-b-q was well seasoned, some members were young, some no longer were and, of course, numerous loved ones were sadly no longer with us. However, “I have to say it now, the changes do not frighten me” and next year will bring more. Some will be melancholy, some will be challenging, some will be interesting, but what it all will be is a continuing party.

The Cure for Black Robe Fever

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In response to both the states of Indiana and Oklahoma’s CLE requirements I am currently engaged in a forty-hour online Mediation course presented by the National Judicial College in Reno, Nevada. I may subject you, Gentle Reader, to the exciting content of this course before long. Hey, why should I have all the fun alone. But for this week I thought you might prefer another of those true courtroom dramas such as the one presented in last week’s column about my service as a prosecuting attorney that helped keep me from falling too deeply into the Black Robe Syndrome. The case that today’s column is about occurred about 25 years ago in front of me in the Posey County, Indiana Circuit Court. To my chagrin, I confess it is all too true and was first confessed to by me in a Gavel Gamut article on August 07, 2006 and appears in the book Gavel Gamut Greetings from JPeg Ranch.

The whole embarrassing courtroom episode reminded me of Dorothy’s serendipitous traipse along the Yellow Brick Road in the land of Oz with the cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man in search of a brain for the Scarecrow, courage for the Lion, a heart for the Tin Man and the Wizard of Oz for Dorothy. When the mighty Wizard of Oz is finally seen for what he really is by Dorothy his façade of omnipotence gets shattered.

It is probably a good thing that we sometimes have false images of our leaders.  I remember my feelings of dismay when I was told by one of my grade school teachers that the painting of George Washington that hung in our classroom and in which The Father of Our Country looked so stern and powerful portrayed General Washington with his lips tightly pursed because he had ill-fitting false teeth.

And I will not disclose at what advanced age I still clung to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.  I might have been slow to catch on but I was happier than my peers.

We may be wrong, but most humans believe in pomp and circumstance and the regalia of office.  Police officers have badges, soldiers have uniforms and presidents have Air Force One.  We do not need to know about what happens behind the scenes.

Then there are judges.  Judges have courthouses, high benches, gavels and those flowing black robes. Hey, it’s kind’a cool. And, of course, some judges have spouses who are not so easily impressed by all the accoutrements since they see their judges asleep on the couch in dingy tee shirts and torn Levi’s.

But what brings the old “feet of clay” sharply into focus are those unexpected events that occur in court where some citizen decides to act like this is a democracy and he or she is an American.

While there are many instances where I have been made to realize that the trappings were for the office and not for me personally, my wife Peg’s favorite story involved a case from about ten years ago where I was imparting great judicial wisdom and admonitions to a young woman who had been found guilty of stealing.

As I was regaling the full courtroom with the majesty of the law and how it fell so heavily on this poor young miscreant, all of a sudden the huge double doors in the back of the courtroom burst open and a large woman with her hair in curlers wearing a housecoat and bunny slippers charged up towards my bench. She was the young woman’s mother and she was not amused and certainly not impressed by my lecture to her daughter.

The lady stopped just behind the bar that separates the hoi polloi from those who are paid to serve them. She stood to her full height and said very loudly:

                     “If you weren’t wearing that long black dress, I’d come up there and slap your face!”

Then she turned and marched slowly and grandly out the back of the courtroom giving me what for the whole time.  The packed courtroom was split between amazement and amusement.

As for me, I knew how the old Wizard of Oz felt.