How do liberal ideas on government interventionism differ.

Both Classical Liberals such as John Locke and Neo-Liberals such as Robert Nozick have similar views on State intervention into the lives of its individual citizens. Both strains of liberalism believe that the state should have a heavily limited role in the lives of individuals, Nozick describing this relationship as the state acting as "Nightwatchmen". This means that the state should only intervene to assure people have "Negative Freedoms", i.e freedom from individual interference, or in Layman's terms acting only to stop individuals interfering on each others freedoms through a strong law and order.

Opposed to this, Modern liberals such as John Rawls believe that government could instead be used to develop a meritocracy (I.e a society where roles are distributed based on skill) with government programs such as a welfare state acting to enable "Positive Freedoms", meaning that people can truly use their free will without being constrained by factors beyond their control, such as being born into poverty.