The fundamental principle of liberalism is that decisions are better left to individuals. Chris Dillow quotes Mill's defining statement that

"over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign"

And I think it's true to say that any liberal would go along with that. The problem is that these same people are all too willing to forget this basic principle when there are controversial issues at stake. The circumstances in which they are ready to drop their principles are different from individual to individual, but it's possible to identify three distinct groups.

The first kind can be characterised as the "bad thing" liberals. They believe from the bottom of their hearts that the individual is really, genuinely sovereign over their own body and mind....except when we're talking about a "bad thing". This may well be something that affects only the individual, but because our bad thing liberal thinks it's, well, bad for them, he feels that the full force of the law should be used to stop them doing whatever they want to do. There was a good example today when LibDem DCMS spokesman Don Foster made what Stephen Tall correctly described as an eeyore-ish response to the government's announcement on casinos, demanding that there should be no further increase in their number.

The second type is the "good thing" liberals. As you might expect, "good thing" liberals believe that decisions should be left to individuals except where something is so good that they must be forced to have it. I was treated to a demonstration of this in a comments thread over at Inner West when the author, James, explained his support for the extension of the school leaving age as follows:

In very broad brush terms as a liberal I suppose I see education as a 'good thing' because it broadens an individual's life choices.

It's not liberalism at all, of course. It's thoroughly illiberal, but this kind of thinking is now very much the norm, and the Liberal Democrats (party of Mill) and the Conservatives (party of freedom) are no exceptions.

The last kind, is of course the "all things" liberal. The one who can make himself retain his principles even when they disapprove of the action that the individual is taking, or when they thoroughly approve of something. Devil's Kitchen is one:

[I] defend the Catholic church's right to make certain decisions, but I won't necessarily support the Church or those decisions per se.

Chris Dillow is another. His typically eloquent defence of the freedom principle which is linked to above is called Losing the Culture of Liberty. But if a large proportion of self-declared liberals are going to drop their liberalism if something is good, and many more if it's too bad, perhaps the culture might as well be gone already.