Faulkner on freedom and equal rights

As certain people seek to deny civil rights and impose second-class citizenship on other people in our country, we should remember William Faulkner's words:

"We cannot choose freedom established on a hierarchy of degrees of freedom, on a caste system of equality like military rank. We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it; our freedom must be buttressed by a homogeny equally and unchallengeably free, no matter what color they are, so that all the other inimical forces everywhere--systems political or religious or racial or national--will not just respect us because we practice freedom, they will fear us because we do."

"On Fear: The South in Labor," William Faulkner, Harper's Magazine, June 1956.