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How Do Civil Rights Protect Our Freedom?

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According to chapter four of the text we have civil liberties, and rights that protect our freedom. Although they sound synonyms they are not. For instance, civil rights are, “limitations on government power, intended to protect freedoms that governments may not legally intrude on” (108). Civil rights are in place to protect people from being discriminated against for their race, disability ect. Whereas civil liberties, “are guarantees that government officials will treat people equally and that decisions will be made on the basis of merit rather than race” (108). Therefore, rather than promising equality to people based on their race, or gender, civil rights does it based on the bill of rights.One of the most important amendments is, freedom of speech. …show more content…

Unfortunately people were not aware of how much censorship there was in those days. The following years however, would witness many trial cases that question the boundaries of what freedom of speech really means. For instance, in a case of Brandenburg v. Ohio the court came to the conclusion that “symbolic speech….were subject to the same protections as written and spoken communication” (122). One of the most controversial cases of this was a man that burned the American flag “In 1984, as part of a protest….. set fire to a U.S. flag...He was arrested, charged with ‘desecration of a venerated object’ and eventually convicted of that offense.” (123). After that incident many people were upset this brought up the question of the freedom that freedom of speech really granted us. Some key restrictions that limit our ability to speak are: incitement of criminal acts, obscenity (extremely offensive

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