Civil liberties (not to be confused with civil rights), revolves around the fundamental freedom of an individual within a geopolitical unit. This is typically defined as a constitutionally enshrined set of laws that protects an individual against an abusive or tyrannical government (or its agents).
The modern concept of civil liberties can be traced back to the Magna Carta (initially known as The Great Charter of the Liberties of England, and of the Liberties of the Forest) of 13th century England. The ruling monarch of the land, the deeply unpopular King John Lackland of House Plantagenet (famously depicted as the villainous king in the tales of Robin Hood), faced a revolt from the feudal classes and clergy owing to his temperamental, incompetent and dictatorial rule.
With his coffers dry from successive wars that stretched back from the reign of his father, King Henry II, and brother, King Richard the Lionheart, and coupled with the growing threat of a French invasion led by King Louis, King John capitulated to the demands of his barons and entered the negotiating table. After a highly acrimonious and contentious negotiation, the Magna Carta was signed by King John and 25 of his most senior barons on June 15, 1215, at Runnymede, on a meadow along the banks of the river Thames.
The Magna Carta severely limited the King’s royal powers and granted personhood to every single one of his subjects. Essentially, the Magna Carta guaranteed the following:
(i) The right of habeas corpus (Latin, you have the body), which stipulates that every man accused of an offence must be subjected to due process under the law, and members of the royalty in breach of the law will also be subjected to the same punishment applicable to commoners.
(ii) The separation of Church and the government, giving the Church freedom from unilateral government interference in making ecclesiastic appointments.
(iii) Establishment of the Great Council of the Realm, an elected body consisting of candidates drawn from the feudal class (barons, knights, etc.). Many consider this Council as the conceptual precursor of the House of Lords.
(iv) Matters of taxation and levies must be discussed with the Great Council of the Realm.
(v) Failure of the King or sovereign to adhere to these stipulations grants the Great Council of the Realm the option of using force or waging a war against the monarchy.
It was a revolutionary concept at the time, especially in light of the fact that the monarchy and the church have for centuries proclaimed that the Kings of England held their throne by divine right, and those who questioned their right to rule also questioned the will of God, and are thus branded as heretics.
The euphoria did not last long, however, as King John renegaded on the treaty as soon as he had managed to consolidate his position and secured his safety. Nevertheless, the Magna Carta is widely credited for its influence on the future constitution of England, along with those of its colonies centuries later, by virtue of the underlying principles of personhood and civil liberties contained within its framework.
The Conceptual and Philosophical Growth of Civil Liberties
The concept of civil liberties detailed in the Magna Carta evolved gradually over the course of the next five centuries, before eventually reaching its intellectual zenith during the Age of Enlightenment. The Enlightenment, a sociocultural movement between the 17th and 18th century that swept through Europe and featuring some of the most brilliant thinkers of the age, weaved the concepts of natural law and natural rights into civil liberties. It was perhaps best explained by the Father of Liberalism himself, John Locke. In his Second Treatise of Civil Government (Chapter 2, Section 4, Of the State of Nature), Locke contends that,
"To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.
A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty."
Locke's writings heavily influenced reactionaries within the political elite who were neck-deep in a bitter dispute with the monarchy. There was an urgent need to reframe the constitution to prevent a recurrence of the English Civil War (1642-1651), but King James II resisted efforts to push through formal legislations that require the monarchy to submit to the parliament. This ultimately culminated in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that saw to his overthrow and the ascension of the joint-rule of his sister, Mary II, and her husband, William III, the Prince of Orange.
The parliament, drawing heavily from Locke's two treatises, passed the Bill of Rights of 1688 (later re-dated to 1689), a legislation that is widely held as one of the most influential in the western world and credited as a key philosophical element of the French Revolution (resulting in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789, the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 (and subsequently, the Bill of Rights of 1791), and the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.
Civil Liberties In the United States
It was 1776, and the still-abstract United States of America was in the midst of a revolutionary war with its colonial masters, the British Empire. Following the Second Continental Congress held a year earlier, which saw the revolutionaries explicitly rejecting their allegiance to the throne of King George III, representatives from the thirteen colonies' Provincial Congresses met to officially adopt and announce the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
A committee was tasked with the creation of a legitimate rule of governance, and resulted in the creation of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union (AoC), which became the governing doctrine of the embryonic nation and provided the legal framework for the establishment of the United States of America, the political and geographical entity comprising the thirteen colonial states.
It wasn't long, however, before the young Congress noticed disturbing flaws in the AoC, and the need for immediate constitutional reforms. Two overriding concerns dominated the discussions over the proposed reforms, namely, civil liberties and fiscal solvency. However, elements within the federal and state government were against these reforms, and discussions reached an impasse.
Matters came to head; however, when Captain Daniel Shays, a respected veteran from the Revolutionary War, organized an armed uprising against the state government of Massachusetts over charges of corruption and abuse of power, even as the state stood on the brink of an economic meltdown. Now known as Shays' Rebellion, the movement was in protest of the government's economic mismanagement, arbitrary and high taxation, abuse of power and the non-payment of salaries for civil servants (including soldiers). Shays pitchfork-waving militia, consisting of farmers and other unpaid war veterans from neighboring counties, terrorized the bureaucratic machinery of the local government in the surrounding areas for almost half a year.
The Governor of Massachusetts, James Bowdoin, declared that negotiating with Shays Army would only lead to "a state of anarchy, confusion, and slavery" and ordered a force of almost 5,000, led by General Benjamin Lincoln and General William Shepard, to deal with the 'rebels'. Shays and his men were summarily defeated, and many of them were condemned to death in resulting trials, accused of being traitors and agents of the British Empire (note: most of the men would later receive amnesty).
Despite their defeat, and other less publicized uprising in the country, Shay's rebellion brought the issue of civil liberties and fiscal responsibilities to national consciousness, forcing Congress and the States to take another look at the subject. The fact that several of the Founding Fathers, most notably George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, threw their support behind the 'traitors', hastened the pace of the debate.
A protracted battle between the governing Federalists and the emerging Democrat-Republican Party ensued, but in the end, the AoC was replaced by the U.S. Constitution to act as the central legal document governing the nation. The new Constitution was formally ratified on September 17, 1787, in Pennsylvania. More importantly though, less than two years later, Congress approved the Bill of Rights and the ten amendments to the Constitution became law.
It is the Bill of Rights that has shaped and protected our rights as individuals since, and any attempt to understand the extent and scope of our civil liberties requires a thorough understanding of these ten amendments.
Challenges to Civil Liberties
There have been historical swings between periods of heightened legislative activism involving civil liberties throughout the country's history, as exemplified in the periods surrounding the Declaration of Independence, Civil War, World War I and II, Korean War, Vietnam War, and most recently, the War on Terror. Revocation and restrictions of civil liberties are usually followed by an easing off period that acts as a natural counterbalance.
We will refrain from commenting further, and instead, proceed to the candidates' position on the matter.
“I want to talk about very briefly is the genuine danger of terrorism, in particular terrorists using weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass murder, nuclear and biological weapons. And I want to suggest to you that right now we should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of if it weren't for the scale of threat…
This is a serious long term war, and it will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country, that will lead us to learn how to close down every website that is dangerous, and it will lead us to a very severe approach to people who advocate the killing of Americans and advocate the use of nuclear or biological weapons.
And, my prediction to you is that either before we lose a city, or if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us.
This is a serious problem that will lead to a serious debate about the first amendment, but I think that the national security threat of losing an American city to a nuclear weapon, or losing several million Americans to a biological attack is so real that we need to proactively, now, develop the appropriate rules of engagement.
And, I further think that we should propose a Geneva convention for fighting terrorism which makes very clear that those who would fight outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of mass destruction, and those who would target civilians are in fact subject to a totally different set of rules that allow us to protect civilization by defeating barbarism before it gains so much strength that it is truly horrendous.
This is a sober topic, but I think it is a topic we need a national dialogue about, and we need to get ahead of the curve rather than wait until actually we lose a city which could literally happen within the next decade if we are unfortunate…”
November 27th, 2006: Excerpts from The Genuine Danger of Terrorism, a speech Gingrich delivered during a dinner organized by the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications in New Hampshire
“We need a serious dialogue -- not knee-jerk hysteria -- about the 1st Amendment, what it protects and what it should not protect. Here are a few baseline principles to consider:
We should be allowed to close down websites that recruit suicide bombers and provide instructions to indiscriminately kill civilians by suicide or other means, or advocate killing people from the West or the destruction of Western civilization;
We should propose a Geneva-like convention for fighting terrorism that makes very clear that those who would fight outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of mass destruction and those who would target civilians are in fact subject to a totally different set of rules that allow us to protect civilization by defeating barbarism before it gains so much strength that it is truly horrendous. A subset of this convention should define the international rules of engagement on what activities will not be protected by free speech claims; and
We need an expeditious review of current domestic law to see what changes can be made within the protections of the 1st Amendment to ensure that free speech protection claims are not used to protect the advocacy of terrorism, violent conduct or the killing of innocents.
And just as free speech protections shouldn't be allowed to shield activities that threaten Americans, so too should we not allow our great national belief in nondiscrimination and equality before the law to be used against us.”
December 4, 2006: The 1st Amendment Is Not a Suicide Pact: Blocking the Speech That Calls for Our Death by Newt Gingrich (Human Events)
Constitutional Amendment which states that the Constitution is henceforth intended to apply to all Citizens of the United States regardless of class, race, gender, sexuality, creed or religion, even if such was not the original intent of the Constitution's framers.
True to his libertarian leanings, Johnson is a firm proponent of the individual rights and civil liberties of the citizens. Considering the fact that the first eight amendments of the Constitution deals with the issue directly, he wants the recent encroachment of government agencies into the lives of private citizens to be reeled back. He has spoken several times of his support in allowing the expiration of the Patriot Act at the end of May 2011 following a final 90-day extension given by the Congress in February.
On the equally explosive subject of gay rights, Johnson offers a qualified backing on the issue, supporting civil unions for gay couples but stopping short of marriage.
• Miller defends the Constitution of the United States of America and the rights, liberties and freedoms of all American citizens equally and without preferential treatment given to any individual, business or group.
Civil libertarians and civil rights activists had high hopes that an Obama presidency would signal a reversal of the legislative challenges to civil liberties that were enacted during the Bush administration, specifically in relation to homeland security laws. However, there is a growing sense of disenchantment with the President over his perceived capitulation in the face of the ‘soft on terror’ charges made by his political opponents. So much so, Obama, with his long history of supporting civil liberties causes, is now seen as siding with the hawkish elements of Congress.
Legendary actor and prominent social and political activist, Harry Belafonte Jr., a noted Obama supporter, expressed his disappointment in the president’s approach to civil liberties while speaking after the screening of his autobiographical film at the Paramount Theater in Charlottesville on January 24, 2012.
“More important,” he said, are “the homeland security laws, which were written to such extremes that they defied imagination that anyone could have thought of those laws.”
That those laws made their way through Congress and were signed by the President, he said, “was an absolutely stunning experience for all of us, and certainly for some of us who saw it in the depth of its villainy.”
Looking out over the audience, Belafonte painted a darkly dramatic picture of the effect of laws like the USA PATRIOT Act and the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed on December 31 by President Obama.”
January 25, 2012: The Examiner, Belafonte criticizes Obama on civil liberties in Charlottesville
Obama’s signing of the wide-ranging $662 billion national defense bill, H.R. 1540 (National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012), in particular, has riled up civil liberties group. They accuse the President of abandoning his principles over political expediency. While a veto from him would not necessarily prevent a subsequent passing of the bill by Congress, it would establish his moral authority on the subject.
Activists are particularly concerned with Title X (Subtitle D, Section 1031-1032) of the Act, which authorizes the military to participate in domestic law enforcement and bypass the judicial process, which they believe is a direct infringement of the Fifth and Sixth Amendment, as well as the Posse Comitatus Act (U.S. Code § 1385), which states,
§ 1385. USE OF ARMY AND AIR FORCE AS POSSE COMITATUS
Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
White House insiders, meanwhile, argues that eliminating these provisions from the bill would have prevented its passing in Congress, and create another legislative battle that would affect the nation’s defense budget, including the wages for our military personnel, and the President had to make a pragmatic decision.
“I have signed the Act chiefly because it authorizes funding for the defense of the United States and its interests abroad, crucial services for service members and their families, and vital national security programs that must be renewed. In hundreds of separate sections totaling over 500 pages, the Act also contains critical Administration initiatives to control the spiraling health care costs of the Department of Defense (DoD), to develop counterterrorism initiatives abroad, to build the security capacity of key partners, to modernize the force, and to boost the efficiency and effectiveness of military operations worldwide.
The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it. In particular, I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists…
… Ultimately, I decided to sign this bill not only because of the critically important services it provides for our forces and their families and the national security programs it authorizes, but also because the Congress revised provisions that otherwise would have jeopardized the safety, security, and liberty of the American people.”
December 31, 2011: Obama announcing the signing of the NDAA
The constitution grants the federal government jurisdiction over only three crimes: treason, counterfeiting, and piracy.
June 25, 2002: House Congressional Record (p.11210)
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave the federal government unprecedented power over the hiring, employee relations, and customer service practices of every business in the country. The result was a massive violation of the rights of private property and contract, which are the bedrocks of free society.
The federal government has no legitimate authority to infringe on the rights of private property owners to use their property as they please and to form (or not form) contracts with terms mutually agreeable to all parties. The rights of all private property owners, even those whose actions decent people find abhorrent, must be respected if we are to maintain a free society.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society. Federal bureaucrats and judges cannot read minds to see if actions are motivated by racism. Therefore, the only way the federal government could ensure an employer was not violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to ensure that the racial composition of a business’s workforce matched the racial composition of a bureaucrat or judge’s defined body of potential employees.
Thus, bureaucrats began forcing employers to hire by racial quota. Racial quotas have not contributed to racial harmony or advanced the goal of a color-blind society. Instead, these quotas encouraged racial balkanization, and fostered racial strife. Of course, America has made great strides in race relations over the past forty years. However, this progress is due to changes in public attitudes and private efforts. Relations between the races have improved despite, not because of, the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Jun 24, 2004: House Vote On Passage: H. Res. 676 [108th]: Recognizing and honoring the 40th anniversary of the Congressional passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
While Romney is seen as a moderate on many issues, this is definitely not one of them.
Wendell Goler: I want to talk, gentlemen, about presidential power and the war on terror here at home. And Governor Romney, I’ll start with you. You have said that the government should wiretap some mosques to keep tabs on Islamic extremists. Would you do this even without a judge’s approval, sir?
Mitt Romney: No, of course not. We’d use the law to follow people who are teaching doctrines of terror and hate, and make sure that if they’re doing that in a mosque, in a school, at a playground, wherever it’s being done, we know what’s going on.
There’s no question but that we’re under threat from people who want to attack our country in this global effort. And I know there’s a lot of attention paid to, if you will, trying to respond to what would happen if we were attacked, and that’s appropriate. We need to have first response up to, up to the best standards.
But our focus has to be on preventing an attack, and preventing attack means good intelligence work. It means if people are coming to this country terrorizing or talking about terror in such a way that it could lead to the violent death of Americans, we need to know about that, track them, follow them, and make sure that in every way we can we know what they’re doing and where they’re doing it.
And if it means we have to go into a mosque to wiretap or a church, then that’s exactly where we’re going to go because we’re going to do whatever it takes to protect the American people. And I hear from time to time people say, hey, wait a second, we have civil liberties we have to worry about. But don’t forget the most important civil liberty I expect from my government is my right to be kept alive, and that’s what we’re going to have to do.
September 5, 2007: GOP Presidential Debate, Whittemore Center, University of New Hampshire, New Hampshire
“Conservatism has had from its inception vigorously positive, intellectually rigorous agenda and thinking. That agenda should have, mind you, three pillars: strength in the economy, strength in our security and strength in our families. We will strengthen our security by building missile defense, restoring our military might and standing by and strengthening our intelligence officers. Conservatives believe in providing constitutional rights to our citizens, not to enemy combatants like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Not on our watch. A conversation with a would-be suicide bomber will not begin with the words, "You have the right to remain silent.”
February 20, 2010: 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference, Washington
Santorum is, for all intents and purpose, a staunch conservative on issues relating to civil liberties. He opposes same-sex marriages and unions as he feels their motives are questionable, opining that they crave society’s acceptance of their ‘bad behavior’. He also opposes adoption for gay couples, as the presence of children in a same sex marriage is against ‘the order of nature’.
Nevertheless, his defense and advocacy of the perfect blend of the American nuclear family, imbued with conservative values, high morals and religious upbringing, tempered with the strong hand of the state, appeals to a significant number of middle class Americans.
His support of federal wiretapping legislation, the Patriot Act and other post 9/11 measures however, is viewed negatively by just as many voters.
" The greatest enemy of civil liberty is its own lack of focus. Choosing to take offense to sentences within paragraphs, and words within sentences, significantly reduces the legitimacy of the offended. The greatest challenge for people who fight for civil liberties is recognizing when they’ve achieved their goals."
R. Lee Wrights, as is the Libertarian stance, supports no limit to individual rights and the protection of personal freedoms.
Wrights said that President Obama has not only failed to reverse the curtailment of our civil liberties begun under Bush, he’s actually shred the Bill of Rights even more. “Not only has he claimed the immoral authority to murder American citizens overseas without indictment or trial, he’s also used the screen of ‘state secrets’ to prevent his targets or their families from challenging him in court. - Brian Irving, Oct 27, 2010.
The simple, basic truth is that all rights belong to the individual. You are born with your rights and no power on earth can take them away from you. You cannot give your rights away. They end only when you die, and not a split-second sooner. Individual rights cannot be divided or multiplied; and, individual rights are superior to any other claimed rights.
Individual rights mean you can adopt whatever culture you want and live any lifestyle you choose to live. We have the individual right to worship or not worship whatever god we want without interference from anyone else, so long as we do not interfere with the rights of other individuals to do the same. It is the fundamental and universal concept recognized by our nation's Founders. As a result of this recognition, the superiority of individual rights became the foundation of the United States government.- R. Lee Wrights, June 12, 2011.
The modern concept of civil liberties can be traced back to the Magna Carta (initially known as The Great Charter of the Liberties of England, and of the Liberties of the Forest) of 13th century England. The ruling monarch of the land, the deeply unpopular King John Lackland of House Plantagenet (famously depicted as the villainous king in the tales of Robin Hood), faced a revolt from the feudal classes and clergy owing to his temperamental, incompetent and dictatorial rule. 
The Magna Carta severely limited the King’s royal powers and granted personhood to every single one of his subjects. Essentially, the Magna Carta guaranteed the following:
The concept of civil liberties detailed in the Magna Carta evolved gradually over the course of the next five centuries, before eventually reaching its intellectual zenith during the Age of Enlightenment. The Enlightenment, a sociocultural movement between the 17th and 18th century that swept through Europe and featuring some of the most brilliant thinkers of the age, weaved the concepts of natural law and natural rights into civil liberties. It was perhaps best explained by the Father of Liberalism himself, John Locke. In his Second Treatise of Civil Government (Chapter 2, Section 4, Of the State of Nature), Locke contends that,
