ABSTRACT
A very powerful and infl uential idea that has been in circulation for nearly two centuries and that challenges fully free society, the kind envisioned by John Locke and the American Founders, is what political philosophers call “positive rights.” The idea of positive rights has challenged the traditional meaning of liberalism. Whereas in earlier times to be a liberal meant to champion limited government, civil liberties, economic freedom, and a restrained role for the military, the meaning has changed so that it now means a system in which government takes on a more expansive role in a society, where markets are highly regulated, where more and more social problems are addressed by public policies instead of the private sector, and where the emphasis is on the entitlements of the citizenry and less about their basic negative or freedom rights, rights not to be interfered with in their persons and property.
