Civil Liberties And Civil Liberties Vs. Civil Rights

In the process of working toward the American Dream, people struggle to fit in, to belong, to be accepted. For many of them, an important part of the American Dream is the chance to reinvent themselves—the opportunity to become someone different, someone better. In “Outlaw: My Life in America as an Undocumented Immigrant”, Jose Antonio Vargas is an “undocumented immigrant” who has been living illegally in the U.S. since he was twelve years old. To chase his American dreams, he embodied a lie until it became unbearable and he expose his truth and let the masks crumble onto the ground. In “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, Martin Luther King Jr. broke unjust laws and engaged in nonviolence direct action in order to pursue his American dream of equality and freedom.

The thirteenth amendment freed African American people from slavery, and the nineteenth amendment gave women the right to vote; but that doesn’t mean these people still have the same amount of freedom as others. However free some may seem, every race and gender is still restrained by the same discriminatory shackles that held back their ancestors many years ago. Contrary to popular belief, the civil liberties of the United States have not been solved; and although some citizens would disagree, the act of forgetting previous experiences on how the nation was built, misusing the rights people are given, and treating other ethnicities or genders as inferiors, would prove otherwise. Although America has highly improved on civil liberties by imposing amendments such as the 13th and the 19th;

During the 19th and 20th centuries Men reigned supreme. The lack of rights for women and poor people sparked protests and were the cause of the appearance of rights activists. Civil liberty issues in the American past have been resolved in the aspects of women’s rights and poor people’s rights but based on perceptions, little has been resolved. Women’s civil liberty issues have been resolved through Women’s rights activists and many years of pushing for constitutional equality.

• According to National Archives, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the law that prohibits the all type of discriminations among U.S citizens and enhances the civil rights. The basic elements of this law: preventing discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race in hiring, promoting, and firing. • According to U.S Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the ADEA is The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, the law that prohibits employment discrimination against persons 40 years of age or older.

The Commerce clause refers to Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution, which gives Congress the power “to regulate commerce with foregin nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes”. This clause is one of the most fundamental powers delegated to congress by the founders. It has helped to seprate the powers between the federal governemtn and the states, along with the branches of governemtn and Judiciary. In simpler terms the commerce clause was to help regulate commerce among navigable waters.

Civil liberties are different than Civil Rights. Where Civil Rights are to prevent the government from abusing us by treating the people wrong and unequally. The Civil Liberties are there to limit the government power on the people. It is there to protect our freedom. That is why we have our freedom of speech which protects us people from having the government limit what we say.

The Bill of Rights are the first ten amendments in our Constitution which protect our fundamental rights and ensure a limited government. In 1868 the 14th Amendment was added, which guarantees citizens equal protection under the law and due process. For the Bill of Rights to be effective it would have to protect everyone rights equally, but there are too many cases when minorities or anyone else’s rights are infringed. Therefore the Bill of Rights and 14th Amendment is ineffective and does not protect the rights of all citizens. Someone’s race, gender, and religion could all affect how they are treated.

A Bill of Rights versus an Amendment Although the original ten Amendments of The Constitution are often referred to as the Bill of Rights, there are important differences between an amendment and a bill of rights. The purpose of this paper is to define a bill of rights and an amendment, and then to clarify their differences. Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary Online (1828) defines a bill of rights as “A summary of fundamental rights and privileges guaranteed to a people against violation by the state—used especially of the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution.” A bill of rights is a law that protects the rights listed within it from abuse by government or any higher power.

The citizens of America need unalienable rights to protect themselves from the government. The unalienable rights are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In the document Andrew Sullivan

Chapter 4 of the book We the People talks about Civil Liberties, this chapter mainly talks about the Rights that were placed in the Constitution (not in the Bill of Rights), it also talks about the Bill of Rights and it describes the rights protected by the Bill of Rights. It also talks about specific rights that work close together with the Bill of Rights and Amendments rights. One of the first Amendments that is described in great detail is Freedom of Speech and Religion. The first Amendment protects US citizens right to talk about almost any topic in the United States. I said almost any topic because there are some forms of speech that aren’t protected by the First Amendment (these forms of speech can be limited or prohibited), some of the forms of speech that aren’t protected by the First Amendment are Fighting Words and Hate Speech, Student Speech, Libel and Slander speech.

Briefly, civil rights and liberties have always moved together, and their difference is complicated as people tend to use them in interchangeable way. However, their difference is that, civil rights is the equality that people demand for whereas, civil liberty is certain activities that government itself does not have the authority to do (Muller). For example, people should not be discriminated regarding their gender, race etc. is civil right, and the first amendment which says that government cannot establish America as any religious country is civil liberty. 2 So basically, civil rights protect people from discrimination while civil liberties protect the people from power of government.

The “Four Freedoms” was the main reason why the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was developed.  “The Declaration was drafted over two years by the Commission on Human Rights, chaired by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.” (“The Four Freedoms” 1). It was adopted on December 10, 1948 and is known to be “one of the most widely translated documents in the world” (“The Four Freedoms” 1). This declaration insists that all rights be upheld by governments and people to secure basic human rights (“The Four Freedoms”

It gives a complete list of all the things that we can do, and the rights that we have. Human rights are an important part of how people interact with others at all levels in society - in the family, the community, schools, the workplace & politics. Although we may not recognize them, the rights admitted in the Constitution are the main reason we can be individuals and believe in what best suits our ambitions and well-being. They are designed to ensure that each person can to live with dignity; free from fear, persecution and violence; productively; and harmoniously alongside others. This is why they are so important to us as a community and as

This idea is that the people’s rights are granted to them by their Creator, rather than their government. This idea was a new and unique one that no one had done before America. Other governments based themselves on the idea that the state was the entity that granted the people their rights. America’s hope behind this idea was to restrict the power of the central government as much as possible. There were even additional means created in order to restrict what power that the government did have.

This means that citizens can vote for different rules and laws so people are equal. If there were no rights certain people would suffer more from not being able to do things such as not being able to drive, or having to do things such as going to military training, but if everyone agrees you may be able to change laws and rules by voting. This is in order to live a happy life. Another reason to be civilized is so the