SEVEN PRECEPTS FOR A BETTER MILLENIUM

Part One

FULL EQUALITY - The Enlightenment, that philosophical fire in which were forged the democratic states of the present day, gives us this single great idea: People are, by birth and by their very humanity, equal. It is pernicious nonsense to believe that any person may rightly be born either monarch or slave. Yet history shows that the Enlightenment democracies have, systematically and consistently, negated full equality for indigenous tribes, slaves, peasants, women, illiterates, cultural minority groups, and the poor. Stop-gap legislation in this country and elsewhere has resulted in a prohibative litany of regardless-of's and on-the-basis-of's. Such lists, it seems, are always incomplete.--Not to mention the fact that hereditary aristocracies on the one hand and mass enslavements on the other, both de facto and de jure, still persist. For these reasons, communities and individuals must demand that governments recognize the absolute equality of all persons, period.