These Days Before the Vote: "From a persuasion that equal liberty was originally the Portion, and is still the Birthright of all men..."

Whitewater, Wis. — Halloween here in rainy and cloudy Wisconsin continues These Days Before the Vote, a series addressing, each day before the November election, a principle or position on which our liberal democratic tradition rests.

In 1790, the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery sent a petition to the newly formed Congress. Among its words were these:

From a persuasion that equal liberty was originally the Portion, and is still the Birthright of all men, & influenced by the strong ties of Humanity...

See Pa. Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Petition to the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States (Feb. 3, 1790).

We live now, under one senescent authoritarian and his populist movement, in conditions of a false, imposed inequality.

The insistence, against established law, that some of those born here as citizens are not equal citizens, indeed, not even citizens at all.

The profiling of some based on no more than skin color or other appearance.

The claim that a growing portion of citizens who speak against this government have no right to do so — that they are so-called ‘enemies of the people

That this federal administration favors some forms of worship over others, and in that prejudice deprecates, lies about, and oppresses lawful and peaceful expressions of faith.

That this federal government, cunningly aware that there are no effective rights without remedies, denies those remedies to groups it deems unequal.

Only the Confederates, traitors to this nation and racist opponents of the nation's highest principles, were more committed to an imposition of inequality on this continent.