Question

could some one help me explain why rights are not absolute. Include how the Constitution safeguards and limits individual rights.

Answer 1

Rights are not absolute simply because they can come into conflict. My right to life, for example, can come into conflict with your right to life, if I happen to try to kill you. If you resist my attempt to murder you with lethal force, my heirs cannot sue you for violating my right to life. Less dramatically, if you restrain me, I cannot sue you for loss of my right to liberty.

Or take free speech: If I shout "fire!" in a crowded theater just for fun (there is no fire), my right to free speech is in conflict with the rights of the other patrons to life and peace, since their lives may well be put in danger by the ensuing scramble for the exits.

Generally speaking, it's accepted that government can resolve conflict between the rights of individuals, or between the rights of one individual and the rights of the general public. Hence government can put reasonable "time, place and manner" restrictions on free speech, can criminalize free speech ("fighting words") designed solely to instigate criminal violence, can prohibit free assembly when it is for the sole and obvious purpose of organized crime (e.g. a lynching party), can restrict the publication of facts or assertions that would endanger the lives of others, can search persons and property to prevent or solve crime, or keep public order, and so forth.

The general principle is sometimes stated: "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose."

The Constitution enumerates the rights of individuals, but it doesn't say a lot of about the limits on those rights, except to throw in an adjective like "reasonable" here and there, to make it clear the rights are not to be taken to absurd extremes. Most of the explicit and detailed reasoning on how the rights of individuals are limited has come from Supreme Court decisions over the years. That process is still going on, as more and more odd examples where lines need to be drawn come to the Court's attention. For example, the exact limitations on a citizen's Second Amendment right to carry weapons are still being debated and worked out.