Too many chains

摘要

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, one of the great moral statements of the 20th century, could not be clearer. It says that "everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion," including the right to change religion and to "manifest his religion in teaching, practice, worship and observance".rnAmerica's Founding Fathers, albeit living in a world where most people were assumed to be theists and Christians, used finer prose to affirm their belief in liberty. Given that God had endowed the human mind with freedom, said Thomas Jefferson, "all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness."