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While libertarian and classic liberal philosophers have defended negative liberty or rights, others have argued in addition for positive rights. Virginia Held discusses positive and negative rights in her book Rights and Goods. She comes forward as a strong supporter of positive freedom and the moral rights associated with it.
The idea that a right to liberty is a right to be left alone, not interfered with, not forcibly coerced, has a long and familiar history....

The assumption underlying this conception was that a man left alone could fend for himself. He could till the soil or ply a trade and make a living....

How limited this assumption was can be seen immediately if one includes, within the picture, women. A woman was never imagined to be able in a comparable sense to fend for herself and was not permitted the chance. A woman could not choose to be a "free man" in the sense provided by this conception of freedom. All others who were incapable of becoming economically self-sufficient, such as servants, were also excluded....

The conception of freedom as the right to be left alone was unsatisfactory when it was formulated and is even more unsatisfactory today. Yet it continues to be the standard conception accepted by many contemporary philosophers and most economists. The conception is severely deficient for all those not favored by current economic, social, political, and legal arrangements. The assumption that a person not interfered with can adequately acquire what he or she needs to live is obviously false in a modern society where we find ourselves with an earth and an industrialized economy that are already fully appropriated and that others often have no willingness to make available in any way to us. The traditional conception of freedom serves to camouflage the degree to which some persons are favored by the status quo and others denied the chance to be free.

To be free, the man of property may need only to be free from interference, but the person without property or the means to acquire it needs more in order to be free than to be left alone with nothing....

A worker, for instance, cannot be free and independent if he or she is at the mercy of an employer who can give or withhold the job without which the worker would be destitute. Persons who can find no employment no matter how hard they seek, and are accorded no more than public or private "charity," cannot be free and independent. And a woman cannot be free and independent if she is at the mercy of a man who can give or withhold the sustenance she needs to live. What will contribute to their being free and independent is assurance of an adequate minimum of what they need, in the form of a guaranteed income or a right to a decent job....

Equal liberty should be assured to everyone as a matter of right. This means that the legal system should guarantee a set of rights that includes such traditional freedoms as the right to free speech, to participate in the processes of government, and to be secure against threats of attack and incursion. The legal system should also guarantee as individual rights sufficient property and economic resources for each person to be a free and independent and self-respecting citizen. [Held, Rights and Goods, p. 122-3, 129-30, 138]