Liberty Alone

Very much so, I don’t know if I can stay within the party if advocating for views outside of the mainstream is forbidden.

Seriously guys, the Lib Dems are not anywhere near being Liberal, or democratic.

If you are Libertarian, then the Libertarian Party is the way to go.

Those views are not that uncommon, so there must be another reason.

Mind you I’ve not heard of anyone wanting to legalise drunk driving before.

Small mercies there. Quite absurd though. The same logic would make Russian-roulette-style shooting at people not a crime 5 times out of six. Yet it would be highly coercive. (Ah but if it’s not the government being coercive then it doesn’t matter, right?)

The drink-driving issue is one that often concerns people. Tristan is correct – if someone has consumed alcohol and drives and get from A to B safely without harming anyone or damaging anyones property then no crime has been convicted. If however, they run-over someone and smash into a car, then they have committed a crime. The Russian Roulette Style shooting at people may not be a crime five times out of six but the individual must take responsibility for the 1in6 crime when blows someone’s head off. There will be victims in all aspects of life and it is for the perpetrators of crimes to pay, not wider society and the individuals within it (unless they wish to set up their own voluntary contained communities) to prevent such crimes from happening.

Well done Gavin. I only hope my own views get such coverage after May 1st. But I’m probably not bold enough! But for the local party to suspend you for expressing personal opinions is outrageous.

“The drink-driving issue is one that often concerns people. Tristan is correct – if someone has consumed alcohol and drives and get from A to B safely without harming anyone or damaging anyones property then no crime has been convicted.”

So if I take a gun and shoot several times in a crowd, and by some miracle nobody gets hurt, no crime has been convicted? The use of common sense is allowed, also risking other people’s lifes is a crime.

I agree with Gavin on some of the ideas which seem to have got him into trouble, though not all of them – usually drawing my Millite line on the side of taking responsibility for yourself, but not endangering others (through recklessness, as I’d assume, Gavin, you’d still forbid deliberate attempted murder…?) – but it would be hypocritical for me to say he should be booted out because he goes further than me. I think the party in general too often errs on the establishment side of upholding its principles; I think Gavin errs on the other side; but neither the majority nor the minority deserves expulsion.

At least Gavin’s thought about his principles, and I suspect there’s not a lot of thought or principle involved in suspending him. Which act sounds like it’s bringing the party into disrepute, do you think?

Besides, I remember that back in 1993 I was the only member of the Federal Policy Committee who wanted to pass unamended the party’s very libertarian (before it was watered down successively at three meetings to which it was recalled) policy paper on prostitution, so Gavin may be in a minority of active politicians on that issue, but he’s in line with what the expert opinion said would be most effective…

It’s one thing to be suspended but there is a process involving a fair hearing at the local exec and then the ability to appeal.

I don’t suppose this is exactly the place to debate one particular of Gavin’s ideological positions – that of drink driving – but since people seem to have started to do so I’ll put in my tuppence worth.

What Gavin says is right. The crime, in a liberal world is to harm someone or to have the intention to harm someone. The imposition of a more or less arbitrary number of micrograms per milliliter of blood beyond which you are deemed to be incapable of exercising judgment sufficient to remain safe and keep others out of harm is illiberal.

It’s not one particularly on which I would go to the barricades, because I know people do do stupid things on what is one of the most dangerous yet legal drugs around. But with other substances, for example, just as capable of rendering someone incompetent behind the wheel there is a more individual judgment is made. For example a few months ago I noticed someone was done for driving erratically under the influence of Red Bull. There’s nothing that says that you can’t drink one, or even ten, cans of Red Bull and then get in a car and drive it but in some people, a large amount will have created enough of a physical effect to make control of a vehicle ineffective. Similarly both prescription and over the counter drugs and legal recreational preparations have a similar effect and yet have no sanctions unless you are seen and proven to be incapable of driving as a result.

Drink driving is a far cry for pointing a six shooter with one bullet in it and pulling the trigger a random number of times. That gun has only one purpose in such a scenario I’ argue, and the five times, if you are lucky, that it fails to blow someone’s head off are more or less irrelevant – the mens rea is of pointing a loaded gun and firing, careless of whether or not it goes off and kills the target. The mens rea of making a subjective judgment as to whether you are competent to drive home is that you want to get home. Quite a different thing entirely.

Of course the corollary in a libertarian view, which people often forget, is that were someone fails to exercise proper responsibility for themself and those around them, the punishment should be all the harder. I would call killling someone with a car under the influence of a debilitating substance you could reasonably have foreseen might cause impairment leading to an incident murder. And I would personally also haul in anyone involved in letting that person get behind the wheel and make them accessory.

But an arbitrary limit on one particular substance is, to me also, ideologically at least beyond the Millite idea of legitimate interference to prevent harm. It may be pragmatically the only way to achieve it, but ideologically it is not the ideal way.

Anonymous (so brave to stand up for your views like that), I disagree with Gavin and Jock here – I think that cars, for example, are so dangerous to others that you should indeed be prevented from operating them if you’re not in proper control of yourself – but you’ve evidently let your thirst for point-scoring get in the way of reading what Jock actually wrote: where someone fails to exercise proper responsibility for themself and those around them, the punishment should be all the harder makes it quite clear that Jock might not forbid such ludicrously dangerous behaviour if it doesn’t actually injure people, but would advocate far tougher punishment in the event of actual damage or death. It’s an ideologically consistent view but, I think, daft in its practical effect. However, to say Jock isn’t advocating individual responsibility is to wilfully misread him.

You yourself quote him in saying “The crime, in a liberal world is to harm someone” – so your argument that “if those explosives explode and the whole block will be destroyed, I don’t have any responsibility” is one even your selective quotation shows to be absurd. Are you by any chance a tabloid journalist?

If the suspension rests on the difference between saying “should not be a crime” and, in the context of a particular speaker talking ideologically “is not a crime” then they’re on very dodgy ground I’d say.

It should be bleedin’ obvious when someone is expressing an opinion and actually suggesting, as if a fact, that the law is not what it says it is. Whatever the tense used.

Anonymous – are you playing with us or do you not understand the libertarian’s over-riding emphasis on personal responsibility and the requirement to live your lives without causing harm to others?

In many ways libertarianism can be extremely conservative. It simply does not believe that coercive laws are the best way to inculcate that personal responsibility.

The anarchist libertarian response to all this is of course that roads should be privately owned and the owner should be able to stop people driving on their road on any arbitrary grounds.

I think Paul is clutching at straws a little – it should be clear to anyone that drink driving is a law as enforced by this state. He’s not offering legal advice.
If this is the sort of standard to which we should be held then nothing would ever get said since we’d be speaking in endless qualifications and footnotes.

Jock,

The trouble with “the requirement to live your lives without causing harm to others” is that to make it remotely workable you have to define harm very tightly indeed, excluding all sorts of harmful things, such as, in this case, exposing others to mortal danger.

Might I observe that there are many ways in which it is acceptable to harm others, that Mill’s harm thingy was only ever meant to be a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. The harm principle can justify talking about a ban, but is not strong enough to justify the ban itself.

Broadly speaking something should be banned if a) it does harm and b) the harm it does is greater than the harm that would be done by banning it, bearing in mind the big premium we put on personal liberty.

On this basis I have no qualms banning drunk driving and attempted murder. But I would not ban driving sober, or setting up a business in competition with an existing business.

The trouble with some libertarians is that they don’t like weighing up harms and instead look for a rule that can be applied irrespective of the consequences. Can I call this deontological libertarianism? All I will say is that if you don’t weigh up the harms, then you will cause harm. And if you apply some other rule instead of weighing up the freedoms, then you will diminish freedom.

Alex Wilcock, I always post as “Anonymous”. Of course I could use some pseudeony, like Rex Peacock for instance, but I don’t think it would be any braver.

I don’t think that my name would say anything to you or anybody else here. But some other people, who I’d prefer not to be associated with, could then easily find my comments with Google.

Anyway, I disagree with Gavin, but I’m sad that he was suspended. I thought Liberal Democrats would have allowed such views inside the party, and I’m disappointed to see that I was mistaken.

“You yourself quote him in saying “The crime, in a liberal world is to harm someone” – so your argument that “if those explosives explode and the whole block will be destroyed, I don’t have any responsibility” is one even your selective quotation shows to be absurd. Are you by any chance a tabloid journalist?”

I have seen using the tabloid journalist argument somewhere else. Is it your current standard argument?

But this isn’t the point. The libertarians here seem to accept, that it is a crime to harm someone else, with or without the intention. Jock also accepts, that if there is an intention to harm somebody, but the attempt fails, there has also been a crime.

Now, if I wanted to kill somebody, I could place a bomb in the plane where I know he will be travelling. If the bomb would explode, it would kill him, which was my intention, but it would also kill all other people in the plane. Now would I have murdered only that one person I intended, or all those, who I knew would be killed at the same time, but whom I didn’t have an intention to kill? I’d say I have murdered them all.

And if the bomb didn’t for some reason explode, what would change? I had the intention to murder only that one person, so I would be guilty to one murder attempt. But wouldn’t I have also been guilty in trying to murder all those people in the plane, who I didn’t intend to kill, but who I knew would die nevertheless, would the bomb explode?

And what is different? There were some failure in the bomb, and suddenly I’m not guilty in trying to murder all those other people, even though I would have been guilty to their murder, if the bomb had exploded?

My point is, that an attempt, which risks people’s lifes is just as much a crime regardless to the fact, whether there was an intention or not. If I can’t give the fact that it wasn’t my intention to kill the other people in the planeas an excuse if I had succeeded, I don’t see the logic if I can give it as an excuse if I didn’t succeed. Had I succeeded, they would all be dead, and that makes them victims.

Jock, I consider myself very close to libertarianism, but this is one of the issues I feel separates me from the dogmatic libertarians, at least. Perhaps it’s about the definitions of the words “victim” and “guilty”. I think, that if I risk someone’s life, he’s a victim, even if by happy coincidence I failed to kill him. And I also think, that if I know, that somebody will die or even might die because of my actions, even though it wasn’t my explicit intention to kill him, I’m as guilty as I was if it was my intention to kill him.

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