The two terms “civil rights” and “civil liberties” are commonly involved in our daily conversations. We use these words so regularly that many of us don't even realize that we are using them interchangeably and incorrectly. Although we can say that they are similar on some level, they actually have very distinct meanings. Knowing how to distinguish them is necessary, especially when it comes to political situations. There are already many distinct characteristics formulated by political scientists and pundits to help us differentiate them, but the easiest way to notice that they are not the same is to look at their definition. Civil liberties are the most fundamental rights and freedoms protected by the United States Constitution, protecting individuals from government actions. Such freedom often exists in a system where the supreme and the governed are closely linked. On the other hand, civil rights refer 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 Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Many Americans believe that although civil rights and civil liberties are both protected by the Constitution, these two aspects are sometimes mutually reinforcing and sometimes can be in complete contrast to each other. In the article, Thomas Gray highlights a situation in which these two conceptions seem completely opposed. In her example, organizations protecting women's rights criticize that legalizing pornography, by allowing people to make pornography freely, actually increases gender discrimination and therefore violates civil rights. Another example where civil liberties and civil rights are in conflict is also mentioned in the same article. In terms of perspective and mentalities, the problem of harassment is also similar to some extent to the problem of pornography, which once again illustrates a paradox of freedoms and rights. This triggers several debates between supporters of the libertarian theory of liberalism and those who believe in egalitarian theories of liberalism. So the solutions to these problems are not always easy, we need a variety of solutions that can oscillate between the term civil liberties and the term civil rights. Thomas' research also suggests circumstances in which gender and education level might affect how a person supports civil liberties. This aspect was mentioned in the document. The author indicates that the theory that experiencing political engagement will improve people's thinking is not a new theory; on the contrary, this idea appeared a long time ago in history. Research on the relationship between political engagement and education has 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 who are highly educated. In 1957, at Berkeley College and then at Nebraska College, a student study of libertarianism took place. He compared the extent and consistency of support for civil liberties in the two schools. And as expected, the results were somewhat similar at both schools. The conclusions were clear! Things don't seem to have changed much since then. Our politics class group conducted interviews with students and professionals and theMost respondents said they supported the Liberties rather than the Conservatives. Although some older adults consider themselves more conservative people, our interview results still align with research from the 1950s, showing that younger people are generally more open-minded and more supportive of civil liberties. Many surveys have been conducted to show the proportion of libertarians and conservatives among Americans and they have all shown that libertarians still make up a large portion of the population. This leads to a problematic consequence: conservatives' civil liberties are unconsciously limited. In 2017, the Cato Institute conducted several surveys on freedom of expression and tolerance. One of them was done with college and university students: Looking at the graph, we can see that college and university students, whether Democrats or Republicans, all agree. that a majority of students on their campus are liberals. This is reasonable since we can predict that most students are young and young people are expected to be more open-minded and the most Liberian group. Another survey looked at media bias among major US news organizations: We can clearly see that since Libertarians make up a large portion of our population and media, they enjoy more privileges compared to Conservatives, and people from minority groups began to feel threatened towards the Libertarians. So, these people will try to hide their true thoughts and opinions, fearing that saying what is different from the majority will be wrong. According to Civil Liberties, we are supposed to enjoy freedom of speech regardless of our political opinion. It is said that whichever party you support, whether you are Liberian or Conservative, you are free to express your opinion on political matters. However, surprisingly, that's not how everyone feels when sharing their political perspectives. The Cato Institute also conducted another survey in 2017 on free speech and tolerance, to assess how comfortable people of different political views are in expressing their own opinions to the public without being hindered by the opinions of others . We can see that from the result, the more liberal a person is, the more free they feel to express their opinion. They are not afraid that what they say will be prohibited due to the different opinion of the people around them, since they know for sure that they are the majority group. In contrast, staunch conservatives think they should be more careful about what they say since they belong to a minority group, and they are aware that they might receive contrasting 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 a political issue, but due to so-called "political correctness", they are afraid to express their own thoughts and thus unconsciously give up their freedom to share their points of view. You may be wondering: what is political correctness? Political correctness is said to be the fear that certain speech or behavior, whether conscious or unconscious, may offend someone, especially those that talk about gender 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.