James M. Redwine

Republic

Natural Law, Morality and Democracy

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Our homo sapiens species has been around about two to three hundred thousand years. We probably began biologically in Africa with what we assert is our Western culture becoming ascendant in southern Europe about twenty-five hundred years ago. The Greeks and the Romans laid the foundation for our civilization and we still rely upon their theories of what a civilized society should be, especially in regard to morality and law.

History is replete with rising and falling societies that have gone from collectively agreed upon legal systems to usurpation of power by elites that caused the society to fall upon its own sword. While there are many reasons why each “eternal” nation collapsed, as Plato posited in his Republic, a society rules by consensus then by a ruling party in its own interests. The rulers define the laws based upon what the autocrats desire, then define anyone who breaks such laws a wrongdoer. This is the final stage of a great civilization. Law moves from a consensus among a majority of the citizens as to what is right and good to a decree from the powerful based upon what they want.

Thousands of years ago primitive societies found they could live better lives among themselves and with their neighbors if they cooperated on such matters as the sharing of natural resources and respect for the person and property of others. This was the beginning of morality; and still moral behavior by individuals and nations comes down to treating others as we wish to be treated. Gradually, such nascent civilizations came to realize that as Aristotle said, legal systems (laws) were necessary because people could not restrain desire for power. If people were perfect, laws would not be needed but, as we are not, to ensure justice we must have law. And if the laws remain just, a society can survive life’s inevitable chaos.

Such philosophers as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle believed the world was grounded in Natural Law. Law just existed as did gods. Mankind only needed to divine what the gods required and apply such rules to humanity. If mankind ignored this immutable Natural Law, then chaos would rein. This concept of the eternal existence of Natural Law was at the core of most of the great legal theories from the ancient Greeks up to our Founding Fathers and is still prevalent today in many countries. In America, we separated law from superstition and left it to individuals to believe or not. This separation of theocracy from democracy was a new concept 250 years ago and has helped preserve our nation through many moral crises such as the Civil War and political in-fighting today. The First Ten Amendments of our Constitution are the rock by which we thrive.

Experience has proven that relying on a fear of a god or gods to enforce laws fails in the face of human nature. We have found that it is human law that must set limits on the natural tendency of mankind to abuse power. Over the last twenty-five hundred years or so we have sought systems of law that restrain autocratic impulses and protect individual rights. The most successful of such systems so far has been the Separation of Powers legal system as set forth in the United States Constitution.

Our Constitution was not based on Natural Law but upon the theories of such visionaries as Baron de Montesquieu. (1689-1755), John Locke (1632-1704), and especially, James Madison (1751-1836) and James Wilson (1742-1798). Wilson not only was a contributing author to our Constitution but also sat on our first United States Supreme Court. These legal philosophers recognized the major problem of instituting a lasting democratic legal system was preventing autocrats from usurping powers that properly belong to the citizens.

The division of executive power and legislative power as a restraint on one another was not sufficient. The inclusion of a third branch of government, the judiciary, was the piece of the puzzle that our Founders devised to answer this fatal flaw that had occurred in other legal systems which had failed, because as power corrupted the leaders, democracy collapsed into tyranny. In America today, our Legislative Branch has generally abandoned its role of restraining our out-of-control Executive Branch and our Judicial Branch has sometimes not asserted proper restraints on both of the other branches.

Is America in a vulnerable position democratically today? Probably not, as yet. However, when the Executive repeatedly takes the country to war in spite of virtually every poll indicating a significant majority of the electorate objects, and the Legislative Branch is supine in its duties concerning the power to declare war and the Judiciary fiddles away, the will of the people is frustrated and democracy might teeter. This could be one of those times as Greece, Rome and numerous other democracies discovered when it is critical that all three branches not only stay in their lane but gird their Constitutional loins up about them and courageously execute their own Constitutionally defined responsibilities.

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”

A New World Resolution

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A new year is rapidly approaching. Hope for a better world is evidenced by universal blame placing, always onto someone else. Perhaps Jeffrey Epstein, or Donald Trump or Lane Kiffin or the idiot driving slowly in the passing lane. Or as Jimmy Buffett finally admitted in Margaritaville, “It was his own fault”.

One thing each of us believes is it is never our fault. Yet, in a republic, the United States for example, it is the fault of all citizens since we either choose or allow to remain in office our representatives. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth may have ordered Admiral Frank Bradley to carry out Commander in Chief Donald Trump’s order to kill the people on the alleged drug boat on September 02, 2025, but in America the President represents all of us. In the court of world opinion, each American violated our Constitution’s Bill of Rights and Due Process clauses as contained within the New World Resolutions of the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.

Our Founders were well aware of the irony contained within those famous New World Resolutions, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal”. They knew that thousands of years of human history belied such a reality. What real truth they knew to be self-evident was that power does not corrupt humans, it enables them to be corrupt. The words were aspirational, not factual. The Constitution of the United States designed a framework for a system of government in which the natural inclination of humans to abuse power is sublimated to the competing powers of the majority who would abide by Due Process of Law.

If the eighty-one people we have killed in the Venezuelan boats were drug runners, there are well established procedures for determining those facts and for dealing with each situation. The U.S.A. has the most powerful military on earth. Even if the Venezuelan government was sponsoring those boats, its military is impotent against ours.

Our aircraft carriers, submarines, destroyers and aircraft can and do monitor every craft that comes within our United States territorial waters. We have the ability and authority to force any such drug boat or fishing boat, to stand down and be searched without danger to American personnel or equipment.

We could safely and thoroughly search such boats and vet their sailors as to drugs or other illegal contents. If such criminal intent against America were to be evidenced, the occupants could be arrested and taken before a court in the United States or a world authorized legal body. Any drugs could be confiscated, used as evidence and later destroyed and the drug runners imprisoned.

Such a procedure is what our Founders would have demanded from King George III. It is called Due Process. As the folk singer Phil Ochs sang in his song, Is There Anybody Here:

♫Is there anybody here
Who thinks that following the orders takes away the blame?
Is there anybody here
Who wouldn’t mind to murder by another name?♫

We Americans who claim to be a light to the world should shout STOP! when our representatives justify killing others without affording them the rights we demand for ourselves. America was born in 1776 and should not lose its aspirational soul after only 249 years. For as Phil Ochs also said in his song, ♫This country is too young to die♫. America today can re-pledge our “Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor” to the hopes our Founders knew had not yet been made possible but that they and we should resolve to make reality. Due process should be our talisman, not just our hope.

 

The Right To Matter

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From www.270towin.com

It was not the British Parliament’s tax on tea that caused the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773; it was the denial of the Colonists’ right to be represented in Parliament.

It is not the sexual part of unwanted sex that matters to the Me Too Movement, we Homo sapiens have spent the last 200 to 300 thousand years engaging in sex; it is the “unwanted” factor that is objectionable.

And when our Founders were barely able to cobble together our Republic it was not the fact that some of the Thirteen Colonies had much greater populations than others or much greater wealth than others that almost caused the United States to be simply thirteen entirely separate entities; it was the fear by both the more populous and less populous colonies that their voices would not sufficiently matter.

There were many reasons why and how our constitutional democracy survived colliding circumstances, desires and egos but two of the most significant compromises were the Proportional Representative construct and the Electoral College.

Large states accepted the compromise that in the Senate each state would have two and only two Senators because their proportional influence was recognized by having the number of Congressional Representatives determined by population. Smaller states accepted this arrangement in like manner because they would have an equal voice in at least one of the two Congressional bodies, the Senate, even though they would have fewer Congresspersons than larger states.

Then there is the imaginative system of the Electoral College. The Electoral College determines who will be the Executive Branch leaders, the President and Vice President, via a method similar to the proportional representative system. And because the President has the authority to nominate all federal judges, whoever has influence over the election of the President has an indirect voice in the makeup of the third branch of our federal government, the Judicial Branch. Therefore, the Electoral College, whose only job is to meet every four years and vote for the Chief Executive and the Vice President, has some influence over two of the three Branches of our government. Of course, the Executive Branch contains the armed forces, the F.B.I., the D.E.A., etc., etc., etc. And these countless agencies assert immense power over all of us. We certainly want our opinions to matter when it comes to all those aspects of our government.

The number of Electors of the Electoral College is determined by totaling the number of Congressional Representatives each state has and each state’s two senators. The number of Congressional Representatives is derived from each state’s population. So, very similar to the general system of representative/proportional government, where all states have two and only two senators but have differing numbers of Congresspersons based on population, the Electoral College is based on every state having some Electors but more populous states having more Electors than less populous states.

Currently there are 538 members of the Electoral College based on 100 Senators and 438 Congressional Representatives. For example, Indiana has 2 Senators and 9 Congresspersons for a total of 11 Electors and Oklahoma has 2 Senators and 5 Congresspersons for a total of 7 Electors. On the other hand, California has 2 Senators and 53 Congresspersons for a total of 55 Electors. Indiana’s sister state of Illinois has 20 Electors, almost twice as many as Indiana, and Oklahoma’s sister state of Texas has 38, over five times as many as Oklahoma. The District of Columbia has no Senators but does have 3 Electors based on the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution. Three is the least number of Electors of any state. The U.S. Territories do not receive any Electors.

Whichever candidate receives 270 Electoral votes, the current majority of Electors, is elected President. Sometimes the candidate who receives the most popular votes does not receive a majority of the Electoral votes. This always reignites a debate to eliminate the Electoral College and go to a pure one person/one vote system. Such was the case in 2016 when the Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton received 3,000,000 more popular votes than the Republican nominee Donald Trump, but Trump received 304 Electoral votes, which was 77 more than Clinton received. Had this outcome been inverted I suggest the pro/anti-Electoral College debate would have also been inverted.

There certainly are legitimate arguments for modifying or even eliminating the Electoral College system even though the College has helped to assuage the constant yin and yang of large states versus small ones. As for me, having spent most of my life, so far, in either Oklahoma or Indiana, I do not wish to rely upon the tender mercies of the few lumbering giant states with huge populations of voters that might deign to turn a deaf ear to my concerns and those of the other residents of the numerous less populous states.