James M. Redwine

Julius Caesar

Leadership

by Leave a Comment

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.

The Ides of April

by Leave a Comment

Julius Caesar was assassinated by his fellow Romans on March 15, 44 B.C. Brutus and his co-conspirators used numerous stab wounds for the job. Our government is using the unrelenting Chinese torture of taxes: drip, drip, drip until our Body Politic is exsanguinated.

At least Jules did not have to inflict his own wounds. Our governments, federal, state and county, require us to report upon ourselves and furnish our public “servants” with the means of ruining our lives if we do not.

It is not like any of us does not realize we have an obligation to contribute to public services. I like driving on paved roads and drinking clean water. What turns our gratitude for our collective governments’ provision of benefits to resentment is our total loss of control over how our hard-earned income becomes lucre. Then it is wasted and mismanaged or, worst of all, given to people our government favors so they can use it to abuse people we do not know.

If our government would use our tax money on services for us, most of us would accept those decisions as necessary even if we might make different choices as to how our money is spent. Most Americans champion democracy and democracy means we each do not always get our way. We get it.

However, it is concerning that our country’s Gross Domestic Product for 2023 was over 27 trillion dollars; federal tax collections were over 4 trillion dollars; state tax collections were nearly 4 trillion dollars and local tax revenues were almost 2 trillion. Yet our federal yearly budget deficit from 2022 to 2023 ballooned up by $320 billion to $1.7 trillion. And our total national debt is currently $34 trillion. I think Peg and I could probably manage to balance our budget with $27 trillion, or maybe only a mere billion or so.

How can our trillions of dollars of hard work result in even more exorbitant debt? It is like we all, ♪ owe our souls to the Company Store ♪ and our government runs the Store. What happened to our capitalistic system? The governmental workers we have hired at exorbitant rates to manage our money are like socialists on methamphetamine. As Great Britain’s Margaret Thatcher said about the soft-hearted and soft-headed British socialists, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money”, in this case, OURS!

When our government graciously gives the money we have earned to people less fortunate, most of us clamp our teeth and bear it. However, when our “public servants” squander our resources to enable other countries to kill people with whom we have no quarrel, we take umbrage.

We are a generous nation, but we object to being complicit in destroying innocents, especially children. Also, even if we are better off than some, we have plenty of our own needs that should be addressed. Charity should at least begin at home.

Anyway, Gentle Reader, just as you, these dark thoughts reappear every year at this time. So, I guess the Pollyanna approach is the only rational option when our government has a stranglehold on all our other options. Maybe Peg and I should listen to the guidance set forth in Matthew, Chapter 5, verse 40 and voluntarily send in more money:

“[I]f any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well.”

On the other hand, even the Book of Matthew may be conflicted by our government’s voracious appetite for our tax money, because only two chapters later we are warned:

“Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot
and turn to attack you
….
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
You will know them by their fruits.”

Matthew, Ch.7, vs. 6, 15 and 16. 

Of course, our governmental “servants” would not be amused if we sent in a check in the amount we believe they should receive. People such as Henry David Thoreau might be courageous enough to go to jail for his non-tax beliefs, but even Jesus advised:

“Pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due,
Revenue to whom revenue is due ….”
Book of Romans, Ch. 13, vs. 7.

My conclusion is that even Jesus saw no hope for relief from paying taxes and our government wasting them. Ok, I give, the check’s in the mail.

 

Do Not Cross the Potomac River

by Leave a Comment

At the Rubicon

In 49 BC the Senate in the Republic of Rome ordered Gaius Julius Caesar to not bring his army across the Rubicon River into the city of Rome. Caesar said, “Let the die be cast”; that is, I’ll take my chances. He did, Rome as a Republic collapsed into civil war and instead of a representative government the Roman people got a dictator. Five years later, on the Ides of March, Caesar was deposed by force.

The people who founded the United States of America came from a tradition of great fear of military power over civilians. In fact, in our Declaration of Independence one of the main complaints against King George III was that, “He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.”

This great fear of military control over the civilian populace of America was guarded against in our Constitution. Article I, section 8 endows Congress with the power and authority to declare war, and to raise armies and militias to suppress insurrections. Article II, section 2 establishes that the democratically elected President shall be in control of the armed forces as the Commander-in-Chief.

In his exhaustive and exhausting treatise, The Framer’s Coup, The Making of the United States Constitution, Professor Michael J. Klarman points out the vital importance to our Founders that “[I]n all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.” See p. 330.

We Americans profess pride in and support of our military as long as we are assured our military remembers its place. That system has worked pretty well and we are likely to maintain it in spite of political pressure being brought upon the generals to undermine their Commander-in-Chief. As I recall from my service days, I did not always recognize as wise what my military superiors thought was wisdom. Joseph Heller in his prescient novel, Catch-22, had a pretty firm grip on the banality of much of the military. On the hand, our politicians sometimes also fall a little short of a full deck. Still, at least we have the opportunity to have some say in who our civilian leaders will be and we can fire them.

Therefore, for me, I’ll chose to bob and weave with the occasional civilian loser versus a palace military coup. Back off oh ’ye purveyors of a Banana Republic. As Scarlett O’Hara said, “Tomorrow’s another day” and as Annie said, “Tomorrow is only a day away.” I can wait. Elections, yes, coups, no.

Another look at the Rubicon

The Ultimate Sin

by Leave a Comment

NJC/Dred Scott Symposium

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York. Campbell was America’s recognized guru in the area of myth and religion. He postulated that the ultimate/unpardonable sin was to be unaware.

When Peg and I visited the just opened Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum and Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama earlier this month then participated in the Dred Scott convocation in St. Louis, Missouri last week, I was constantly made aware of Campbell’s admonition. I thought back to when I lived in an apartheid society of which I was barely conscious. When I saw the representations of lynchings and Jim Crow laws in Montgomery the stark reality of a separate and unequal daily life assaulted me. But when in St. Louis I listened to personal accounts of Black people who were on the unequal side of the equation, my own lack of alertness came into focus.

While you can anticipate the content of the displays at the EJI, when you walk through the hundreds of metal coffins inscribed with thousands of names of murdered Black people including several from Posey County, Indiana, you will naturally contemplate the evil we are capable of doing to one another just because someone may be an “other”. But when you hear directly from living persons who are still experiencing a denial of equal justice you are forced to confront your own previous lack of awareness.

The Dred Scott case was decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1857 and led directly to the Civil War four years later. It is only one of many wrong decisions of the Supreme Court but is probably the worst. Chief Justice Roger Taney (1777-1864) who sat on the Supreme Court for almost thirty years authored the 7 to 2 opinion. It held that Negroes could not be citizens of the United States and had no rights that white men were legally bound to recognize, and that Dred Scott must remain a slave.

On Monday, July 16, 2018 at Logan University in St. Louis descendants of Dred Scott (c.1799-1858), Confederate President Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) and Roger Taney along with one hundred and fifty judges, attorneys and academic scholars were brought together by Judge Judith Draper and her husband Justice George Draper in conjunction with the National Judicial College to engage in “reconciliation”.

NJC President Benes Aldana, NJC technology specialist Joseph Sawyer, Michael Roosevelt education specialist for the State of California Courts and I as an NJC faculty member presented the afternoon sessions after the descendants and audience members held an interesting and extremely positive discussion during three hours in the morning.

The relatives of Taney and Davis did not attempt to excuse slavery. They did, however, clearly and poignantly point out their ancestors had done many good things along with their egregious errors in moral and legal judgments. As Peg and I listened to them I was reminded of Mark Antony’s funeral oration for Julius Caesar:

“The evil that men do lives after them,

The good is oft’ interred with their bones.”

William Shakespeare, Act III, sc ii.

What the EJI and Dred Scott experiences did for me was force me to remember and dissect my experiences under the system of legal apartheid in my hometown of Pawhuska, Oklahoma. I had never given more than a passing thought as to why “Colored” boys could not enter the front door of the pool hall or come to the front part of the building. And now my home town is New Harmony, Indiana where, according to the book by William E. Wilson On the Sunny Side of a One Way Street at page 91 he wrote that when he was a boy in New Harmony:

“By the twentieth century New Harmony had lost the egalitarian faith on which it was founded a hundred years before, and Aunt Minnie’s Lizzie (Wilson’s Aunt’s Black servant) was the only Negro permitted to live in the town. She had a room in the hotel (owned by Wilson’s Aunt and Uncle) and never went out on the street, day or night. Uncle Harry and Aunt Minnie did everything possible to make Lizzie feel like one of the family, not only because she was an excellent cook but also because they loved her. Even so, I have often wondered since how Lizzie endured her ostracism in the town.”

And Wilson also writes of his father’s loss of his Congressional seat in 1925 because he refused to join the Ku Klux Klan.

Well, I am more “aware” now than I was before the visit to the EJI Museum and Memorial, the Dred Scott convocation and Mr. Wilson’s book, but realize there’s more I need to do while, I hope, there’s still time to do it.

I wish to sincerely thank the friendly and expert staff of our fine Alexandrian Public Library in Mt. Vernon, Indiana for providing me with several excellent reference works on Dred Scott and William E. Wilson’s interesting book on New Harmony.

 

For video of Peg’s pictures of the Convocation please go to: https://www.youtube.com/edit?video_id=qqOf6KZ7ZBw&video_referrer=watch

Feet of Clay

by Leave a Comment

Picture by Peg Redwine

William Shakespeare had Marc Antony preach these words at Julius Caesar’s funeral:

“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

Act III, Scene 2

Antony went on to list Caesar’s accomplishments in addition to his being ambitious. There was some good, some bad. Perhaps the citizens of Rome should have erected a partial statue of Caesar honoring just the good parts.

This could be a solution to our current controversy over monuments to historic figures. A committee could be composed of people who admire the works of a now dead leader and those who find the figure’s behavior flawed. A few examples might be helpful.

George Washington survived Valley Forge, presided over the Constitutional Convention and refused the opportunity to be named an emperor. On the other hand he owned hundreds of slaves and helped enshrine slavery into our legal system. The Committee might consider cutting the Washington Monument in half.

Thomas Jefferson was responsible for the Bill of Rights that guaranteed individual liberty but only to twenty-one year old white males. He also owned slaves and had children by one of them. Today such an employer/subject relationship would result in severe censure. Perhaps the Committee might recommend the Jefferson Memorial be closed every other week.

As we search for unblemished heroes to honor we could consider Abraham Lincoln who issued the Emancipation Proclamation. However, he at first averred slavery would be preferable to the disintegration of the Union and the Proclamation did not free all slaves just those in the states of the Confederacy. The Committee could maybe have a disclaimer added as a placard around his statue’s neck.

Andrew Jackson committed adultery, captured Seminole Indians under a flag of truce and as president created The Trail of Tears. On the other hand, he was a courageous and victorious military leader. A short bronze bust could replace his heroic sized statue.

As for Mount Rushmore the Committee would have to remove at least 3 of the 4 figures. Of course, Teddy Roosevelt had a penchant for shooting animals which might upset the ASPCA; so all 4 might have to be erased.

Right here in Posey County, Indiana we have a dilemma about what to do with our most famous citizen. Alvin Peterson Hovey was once Posey Circuit Court Judge, a Civil War general for the Union and our only governor. Unfortunately, he also was instrumental in helping to cover up the murders of seven Black men in October 1878. One of those Black men was shot and stuffed into a hollow tree on a farm owned by Hovey. Will the Committee have to remove the glowing patina from Hovey’s bronze in the Indiana State House?

One might look to Jesus as the paragon of virtue but even he got angry and threw the moneychangers out of the temple. He, also, voiced his hope that the cup of his great travail might pass from him. On the other hand, apparently no one knows what Jesus looked like unless one believes the Shroud of Turin is a clue. I guess the Committee would not be able to find any statues of Jesus to modify.

It appears that history has not provided us with any perfect examples to honor. Maybe the Committee will have to suggest that all statues be modified by substituting feet of clay.

Picture by Peg Redwine