That Gavin Webb can be suspended from a ‘Liberal’ party for having unorthodox views, just confirms to me that Cowley Street is hoplessly wedded to the State as a cure all and is full of people from the ‘Political Class’ (see Peter Oborne’s excellent book)

The LD party is no longer a ‘radical’ party, and I have put my political support behind the Libertarian Party, which at least has a core philosophy of personal freedom and social responsibility and is truly a radical party. I have not understood what the Liberal Democrats have stood for, for years

Surely the whole point of hard core, ideological libertarianism is that everyone should be brought up to exercise that sound personal judgment about lines they can and should not cross in terms of their potential to harm others, and to what extent the punishment for so doing is bearable.

For example many ways of harming others in a truly libertarian society would be torts rather than criminal offenses and it would be up to the “victim” to determine whether it was worth their while and potentially resources to pursue. Obviously society, in the form of a state mechanism, supports this right, and steps in where the harm is such that the victim could not represent him or herself.

But whatever, you will note that I did say that drink driving would not be one I would go to the barricades on and that indeed whilst ideologically the idea of a more or less arbitrary “objective” determinant of who is capable or not of driving and after how much of what substance is probably not a libertarian one, pragmatically, and partly because of the existing issues we seem to have with our overall idea of responsibility around alcohol, a statutory limit might be the best approach.

But one of the key principles I would say of libertarianism is that the presence of such laws somehow removes from people the obligation to be personally responsible and sensible as to the effect on others of your actions and leads to a greater dependency on our lawmakers to make decisions for us.

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.

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.

http://www.transport.intelynx.net/Home.html

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.

It is also possible that the suspension decision was taken under the emergency procedure of the executive (for example, by three officers consulted on the phone) and therefore the broad view of the exec may be very different. Indeed, most local execs of whom I have had knowledge are very fair, broad-minded and liberal. And, as I said earlier, there is a appeals process which goes all the way up to the natonal conference if necessary.

Yes, I agree, if all that has happened is a failure to insert the word “should” then that is not a proper basis for expulsion. But I don’t know the specifics.