So what emerged in the early liberal era was a strange mélange of emancipatory principles advocating universal human rights, a defense of the modern leviathan of state and its active role in advancing market culture, a wariness of that same state where it might prove a tool to challenge property, a defense of sovereignty for the “civilized” world of possessive individualism, and a limitless right to conquer and even exterminate those who were deemed uncivilized by European standards.
