After pardoning his son Hunter for numerous offenses against the United States of America, Joe Biden flew to Angola in an attempt to dodge questions from journalists. After touching down in the capital, Luanda, on December 3, Biden made his way to the National Slavery Museum, where he lamented America’s “original sin.” Yet Biden did not seem to realize how his comments about the importance of equal justice directly apply to Hunter’s pardon.

“I’ve often said America is the only nation in the world founded on an idea,” Biden told his audience in Belas, Angola. “Most countries are founded based on race, ethnicity, religion, geography or some other attribute. But in the United States, founded on an idea, one embedded in our Declaration of Independence, and that is that all men and women are created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout their lives. It’s abundantly clear today we have not lived up to that idea, but we’ve never fully walked away from it either. And that’s due in no small part to the determination and dreams of African-Americans, including Angolan-Americans.”

Biden chose to make these remarks in Angola because many historians believe the first Africans to reach Virginia in 1619 were from Angola. During his speech, Biden honored Wanda and Vincent Tucker, who descended from these Africans. Yet Biden did not tell the story of how the Tuckers’ ancestors were actually enslaved—a story that involves an activist judge handing out preferential treatment to the well connected.

The first 20 Africans to reach colonial Virginia began their journey to the New World after their own people sold them to Portuguese slave traders. The Portuguese wanted to sell them as chattel slaves in Mexico, but English privateers rescued them from the Portuguese and dropped them off in Jamestown, Virginia. The English colonists at Jamestown did not send these Africans back home to Angola, where they would have been sold again. Instead, they made them indentured servants with the same rights, duties, privileges, responsibilities and punishments as their white indentured counterparts from Britain.

Since the Bible mandates that people cannot be held in indentured servitude for more than seven years (Exodus 21:2), the first group of Africans to reach Virginia were given both land and freedom in 1626. Their descendants became the nucleus of the free black population that existed in Virginia before the Civil War. It was not until 1653 that the Virginian colonists began treating African indentured servants differently. The story of how this change occurred carries a vitally important lesson for America and the Biden family.

One of the most successful African colonists in Virginia was a black man named Antonio Johnson. He was purchased from the Portuguese in 1621 and given his freedom a few years later. The colonial government granted Johnson a large plot of farmland, and by 1653 he was a wealthy farmer with servants of his own.

Like the unforgiving servant in Jesus’s parable (Matthew 18:21-35), however, Johnson refused to treat his indentured servants the way he had been treated. He had purchased another black man named John Casor but refused to give him his freedom after his seven-year indenture. The matter made its way to court, and the Northhampton County Court ruled in 1653 that since Negros were not English, they were not protected by English Common Law. Therefore, Casor could be held in slavery by Johnson indefinitely.

This court case made a mockery of English values by using two standards of justice: one for white indentured servants who had to be released after seven years and one for black indentured servants who could be held in perpetuity. Yet modern progressives do not talk about the “1653 Project.” They talk about the “1619 Project.” They do not want people to know that English Common Law was broken when the first Africans were enslaved. They want you to think that English Common Law was the problem in the first place.

Virginia was not wrong to liberate 20 enslaved Africans from the Portuguese and give them land after a biblically mandated seven-year period of servitude. This decision brought a lot of blessings to families like the Tuckers. Virginia was wrong to turn its back on the principle of equal protection under the law. The Johnson v. Parker court case was a wicked decision that plagued America for centuries. The remedy for this wicked decision is a return to the idea that there must be one standard of justice in America.

By pardoning his son for any “offenses against the United States” committed over the past 11 years, Biden is acting a lot like Antonio Johnson, who believed there should be two standards of justice in America: one for him and one for the indentured servants farming his 250-acre plot. Hopefully the American people will learn from their past mistakes and stop Biden from turning America into a corrupt oligarchy operation above the law.

Freedom can only prevail when the government governs people according to set legal principles, not by leaders’ fancies or whims. That is why John Locke wrote there must be “one rule for rich and poor, for the favorite at court and the countryman at plow.” It is also why Moses wrote, “Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty …” (Leviticus 19:15). When people in power use the law for their own agenda and to the detriment of their enemies, freedom dies.