James M. Redwine

George Washington

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

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”

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.