Two hundred thirty years ago, a remarkable thing happened. A group of duly elected delegates of a people sat down and wrote a one page document. The document included these immortal and revolutionary words:

"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,"

Today, these words are common place. We bandy them about and memorize them in second grade. We hold them up as models to other countries and we even preserve the original piece of paper on which they were written (I've seen it, it is pretty cool). But at the time, these words were extraordinary, revolutionary. And they quite literally helped change the world.

Now any U.S. history buff will tell you that the words were certainly not lived up to. To begin with, they clearly ignored half the population of the country by excluding women. People of color and those who did not possess land were also held to be not quite so equal, at the time. It has taken a very long time to make the progress that we have so far (it has been less than 100 years since women got the vote), but, I hope, that it is an ideal that we still strive for.

Of course, we come up short. And one area in which we fall grievously short is the capital punishment system. When 98% of death row inmates are indigent, all people are not created equal. When 82% of death row inmates are there for the murder of a white person, all people are not created equal.

And when the state kills a man already helpless, as it did a week ago, the right to life has been besmirched.

Rights are funny things, because, unlike so much else in life, a right really is, in many ways, black and white. You either have a right or you don't. There cannot be somewhat free speech and more than a eprson can be a little bit pregnant. A political scientist has described a right as something that a government is bound, not only not to infringe upon, but to defend from infringement by other outside parties. Our government fails on both counts.

Because a right, to be a right, must exist for all people. At its root, this is the claim that has ended slavery and allowed women to vote. To be a true right, everyone must enjoy it. To honestly live up to our statement, laid out so beautifully two hundred thirty years ago, we must, as a society, declare that all people have a right to life, and that such a right is to sacred to ever be withheld.