Summary
Twenty-five years have passed since the passage of the 1981 Declaration, and it is important to celebrate the event. One of the keys to a happy life is to go where your are celebrated, not simply tolerated. And moreover, it is the optimists who celebrate -- pessimists commemorate. Whether you get to the concept of choice as a rational person, thinking post-enlightenment thoughts, or as someone embracing the theological construct of free will, choice creates respect for one another, and respect honors differences while it celebrates a common humanity. The world that the author sees today is a world that is absolutely desperate for the celebration both of choice and of a common humanity. The Declaration is a compromised document, and, ironically, it can be used to embrace an absolute -- the absolute in the Islamic faith that precludes the changing of one's faith. However, the Declaration can also be used to embrace the notion that the international principles of religious rights have been codified, in 1948 and in 1966, and that the articles that protect the right to change one's faith will be carried forward and preserved.
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Extract
Keynote Address: After Twenty-Five Years
Twenty-five years have passed since the passage of the 1981 Declaration, and it is important to celebrate the event. But what are we celebrating? Is it something more than simply the continuation of the paper trail in human rights from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights1 to the 1966 Covenant on Civil and Political Rights2 to the 1981 Declaration on Religious Intolerance and Discrimination?3 Perhaps more importantly, why should we celebrate?
One of the keys to a happy life is to go where you're celebrated, not simply tolerated. And moreover, it is the optimists who celebrate-pessimists commemorate. Do you know the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? A pessimist has more facts. That has always been true. It was true twenty years ago and twenty generations ago and will be true in the future.Here is my definition of an optimist: An optimist is the guy who falls off a ten-story building and is exclaiming as he passes the fifth flo...See the full content of this document
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