Without our civil rights and liberties provided to us through the Constitution, freedom and equality wouldn’t be as attainable as it is today. Our liberties and rights are what have shaped our nation into the country it is today through different revolutions. Despite being viewed as similar terms and often used interchangeably, civil liberties and civil rights both serve to provide different types of protection to people living within the United States.
Civil liberties are defined as “being limitations on government power, intended to protect freedoms that governments may not legally intrude on” (108). Although civil liberties are often confused to be the freedom guaranteed to the citizens of the United States, in actuality, they are the restrictions made to our government in order to achieve the freedom desired by the people. In order to grasp a firmer understanding of what civil
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These civil liberties restrict the government from revoking one’s freedom through amendments such as the first to the seventh. Thus, the Bill of Rights, as implied by the authors of the textbook, is crucial to protecting citizen’s freedom and prevent the potential corruption and misuse of government power. On the other hand, civil rights were created to provide equality. Although liberties provide protection from the government, civil rights were created to protect people from discrimination despite their gender, age, national origin, race and more. Civil liberties are more difficult to define due to changes in perception as time goes by. For example, the Voting Rights Act was passed on 1965 while the bill of rights was passed in 1689 which goes to show that equality is not always as quick to be acknowledged (37, 167). One may infer that