Your Rights
By Tom Head, About.com Guide to Civil Liberties
According the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the only legitimate purpose of government is to secure human rights. Although our understanding of human rights has changed a great deal over the centuries, the idea of a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people remains the unrealized dream of liberal democracy.
Freedom of Expression
"The primacy of the word, basis of the human psyche, that has in our age been used for mind-bending persuasion and brain-washing pulp, disgraced by Goebbels and debased by advertising copy, remains a force for freedom that flies out between all bars." -- Nadine Gordimer
- Free Speech Issues
- History of Flag Burning Laws in the United States
- Newt Gingrich on Free Speech: A New Sedition Act?
- Top 10 "Obscene" Literary Classics
- Don Imus and Free Speech
- Ahmadinejad at Columbia: Giving the Devil His Due
Religious Liberty
"The constitutional freedom of religion is the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights." -- Thomas Jefferson
- Religious Discrimination in Child Custody Settlements
- George Washington's Letter to Touro Synagogue
- Thomas Jefferson on the 'Wall of Separation' Between Church and State
The Right to Bear Arms
"An unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment ... One of the democratic rights of the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, gives the people the right to bear arms. However, there is a greater right; the right of human dignity that gives all men the right to defend themselves." -- Huey P. Newton
- The Second Amendment: Text, Origins, and Meaning
- How Should the Second Amendment Be Interpreted?
- Profile of the National Rifle Association (NRA)
- Two Interpretations of the Second Amendment
- Gun Control After the Virginia Tech Tragedy
- Cesare Beccaria on the Right to Bear Arms
Habeas Corpus
"The writ of habeas corpus is the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action." -- Justice Abe Fortas, Harris v. Nelson (1969)
