i'm henry olson. i'm vice president at the american enterprise institute and director of its national research initiative. the nri is an entity with aei that financially supports original research and writing on questions of domestic public policy. and is the proud sponsor of the book that's the subject of today's event. voting rights and wrongs, the elusive quest for racially fair elections available for purchase at www.aei.org, i might add. the five most important words in american political history are all men are created equal. ultimately, virtually every political question is how to apply these words to the question at hand and every one of those applications requires americans to answer three questions. who are men? what does it mean to be created equal? and does being created equal imply an inequality of fact in light of the circumstances and the question at hand. nowhere can we see this more clearly than our long-standing national discussions on race. as abraham lincoln so aptly said during th