The two terms “Civil Rights” and “Civil Liberties” are usually involved in our daily conversations. We use these words so regularly that many of us don't even realize we use them interchangeably and incorrectly. Although we can say that they are similar to each other in a certain sense, but in reality they have very distinct meanings. Knowing how to distinguish them is necessary, especially when talking about political situations. There are already so many distinct characteristics created by political scientists and experts to help us differentiate them, but the easiest way to notice that they are not the same thing is to look at their definition. Civil liberties are the most basic rights and liberties protected by the United States Constitution, which protects people from government actions. Such freedom often exists in a system where the supreme and the governed are intertwined. On the other hand, civil rights refers to the government's actions to create equality among its citizens. It is guaranteed by the Constitution in the form of amendments. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Many Americans believe that although both civil rights and civil liberties are protected by the Constitution, these two aspects sometimes reinforce each other and can sometimes be completely at odds with each other. In the article Thomas Gray highlights a situation in which these two conceptions appear to be completely at odds with each other. In his example, organizations that protect women's rights criticize that legalizing pornography, allowing people to do pornography freely, is actually increasing sexual discrimination and therefore violating civil rights. Another example of when civil liberties and civil rights are in conflict is mentioned in the same article. In terms of perspective and mentality, the problem of harassment is to some extent also similar to the problem of pornography, which, once again, illustrates a paradox of freedom and rights. This triggers numerous debates between people who believe in the libertarian theory of liberalism and those who believe in the egalitarian theories of liberalism. Therefore, the solution to these problems is not always easy, we need a variety of solutions that can oscillate between the framing in the term of civil liberties and that of civil rights. Thomas' research also proposes circumstances in which gender and educational background might influence how someone supports civil liberties. This aspect was mentioned in the article. The author points out that the theory that the experience of political involvement will improve people's thinking is not a new theory; instead, this idea appeared long ago in history. Investigations of the relationship between political involvement and education have shown that, while education is the more important of the two in promoting support for civil liberties, participation has an important additional effect among those with a high level of education. In 1957, a study of libertarianism in college students was held at Berkeley College and then at Nebraska College. He compared the scope and consistency of support for civil liberties at both schools. And as expected, the results were somewhat similar across the two schools. The conclusions were clear! Things didn't seem to have changed much since then. Our Politics class group did some interviews with people from college and work and the majority of those interviewed said they supported freedoms over conservatives. Although some older people consider themselves more conservative, our resultof the interview still matches research from the 1950s, showing that young people are usually more open-minded and have greater support for civil liberties. Many polls have been conducted to show the relationship between libertarians and conservatives among Americans and they have all shown that libertarians always represent a large portion of the population.populations. This leads to a problematic consequence: conservatives' civil liberties are unconsciously limited. In 2017, the Cato Institute conducted several surveys on free speech and tolerance. One of them was conducted among college students: Looking at the graph, we can see that college and university students, no matter if they are Democrats or Republicans, all agree that the majority of students on their campus are liberal. This is reasonable since we can predict that most people in the student body are young, and young people are supposed to be more open-minded and the most Liberian group. Another poll was about media bias among major American news organizations: I can clearly see that because libertarians make up a large part of our population and our media, they receive more privileges than conservatives, and those people from minority groups have started to feel threatened towards libertarians. Therefore, these people will try to hide their true thoughts and opinions, fearing that saying what is different from the majority is wrong. According to Civil Liberties, we should have free speech regardless of our political views. It is said that no matter which party you support, no matter if you are Liberian or conservative, you are free to express your thoughts on political issues. However, surprisingly, that's not how everyone feels when they share their political perspectives. In 2017, the Cato Institute also conducted another survey on free speech and tolerance, to see how comfortable people with different political opinions are in expressing their opinions to the public without being hindered by the opinions of others. We can see that, according to the result, the stronger a liberal is, the more likely he is to feel free to express his opinion. They do not have the fear that what they say will be prohibited due to the different opinion of the surrounding people, because they know for sure that they are the majority group. In contrast, strong conservatives think they should be more careful about what they say because they are a minority group, and they are aware that they may receive conflicting opinions. This leads to a case where civil rights and civil liberties appear to be in conflict; people obviously have the right to express their opinion on political issues, but due to what is called “political correctness”, they are afraid to express their thoughts and therefore, they unconsciously give up the freedom to share their perspectives. You may ask: what is political correctness? Political correctness is said to be the fear that certain speech or behavior, regardless of whether it was conscious or unconscious, would make someone feel offended, especially those involving sex or race. Some people are very sensitive to political issues and may feel distressed by certain words or actions. So people believe in political correctness and think these should be eliminated. Since a couple of years ago, the culture of political correctness has grown enormously enough to play a serious role in elections, especially in the election of Trump. It's not that people believe more and more in political correctness, but they are increasingly aware that correctness.