History - Civil Liberties Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

History - Civil Liberties - Term Paper Example With reference to the fourteenth amendment, it is expected that the bill of rights shall protect citizens against the infringement of their rights. In order for this to be adhered to, the court enacted selective incorporation where all the states were asked to merge the selected parts in the bill of rights. With time, the states and the Supreme Court had enacted all bills of rights. All the citizens should know the various civil liberties that have been granted to them and despite the fact that they have their own freedom; they ought to be aware of their limitations too. For instance, all citizens are granted the freedom of speech, petition and press where they are allowed to communicate freely in a democracy. It is at this point that they can criticize the actions of the government in order to reach a consensus in terms of the decision making process (Schimdt 31). However, not all speech is protected as the speech that can cause harm or constitutes danger is discouraged. Speech that is likely to lead to evil or appears to be stating anything negative about a person is not encouraged. This therefore limits what the citizens can say in public (Schimdt 54). The presence of symbolic speech is common; hence, a particular group uses it in order to demonstrate a specific viewpoint. These symbolic speeches have been protected by the court, for instance burning of the draft cards or those of the American flag. Freedom of religion is another civil liberty in which the religion of an individual cannot be criticized without evidence. As for the congress, they are not allowed to make any laws in which they establish the religions as state religions. This serves as an advantage to the religious individuals as they are free to exercise their practices without fearing any restrictions or questioning. It is also of merit as it states the clear-cut boundary between the church and the state where issues of the state cannot be interfered with by the religious groups and vice vers a. The government does not have the authority to set up a church or even aid one religion to appear superior over the other. However, this becomes a challenge in cases where there are issues in the church that could be solved by the government leaders and the religious members disagree. This appears to cause a conflict of interest in most cases and this has led to the rising of various religious groups some of which have turned out to be religious sects. The most common ones are the government aided religious schools. This is attributed to the fact that such schools lack a clear protocol on who actually manages the issues of such schools and in most cases lack of accountability and transparency are common. It is argued that such schools in most cases are used for secular purposes and with time, they begin to inhibit religion. In most cases, the government is only allowed to fund such schools if it is clear that the funds will not be used to encourage the government to become involve d in issues of religion. The accused also has their rights on crimes committed. The founding fathers of the civil liberties fought to protect the citizens of America from any arrests or being detained without first being taken into trial. They should be presented to the judges who should hear and decide on their case without being taken directly to jail for imprisonment (Hoffman and Rowe 23). However, this right has not been enacted fully