When I say 'initiate' force, I mean that the person forcing is the first person to commit force, i.e. is commiting agression. You cannot 'initiate' force against a criminal, since they were the ones to do the initiation.
The criminal is commiting force because he is forcing the victim to part from his well-earned property.
Well, regardless of the semantics, I think we both agree that theft is a crime.
Yes, but I don't agree that all crime involves force or aggression, and use of force is the subject of your question.
Check writing is a poor analogy to drunk driving. One the one hand it is more akin to driving in general, not specifically drunk driving. And secondly check writing is a private privilege given by a bank, not a license issued by a unit of government.
Drunk driving is a hazard that cannot be reasonably anticipated by other users of the road. If there was a mechanism by which all other drivers could be alerted to the hazard, then you could make some of your case. Even so, the license to operate a motor vehicle on the public roads is not a right, but a privilege given to individuals by the whole citizenry in the form of the state. In creating and maintaining the public roads, the public has a reasonable expectation that they can share those roads without putting themselves in jeopardy.
Your argument that the arrest is not moral seems to hinge that once the public as a whole has created a benefit, anyone can use it without regard to the other members of the public. I disagree, since it a shared resource by the nature of its creation. An arrest to stop an abuse of the public road that infringes on others remains moral.
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I admit that writing a check was a poor analogy, but I couldn't really think of anything better that late at night. Also, what right does an organization have to bar people from using the roads their tax dollars paid for? Drivers' licenses imply that the people who paid for the roads do not own them. The notion behind barring drunk drivers from the road has led to the ridiculous law in my state that bars people from using cell phones as well. Should someone be barred from the road even if they are most alert when they are drunk or talking? If a drunk driver harms another driver in an accident, he should have to provide monetary restitution to pay for a new car and any medical procedures necessary. If that were in place, rather than simply arresting people before they commit a crime, drunk driving would still be discouraged.
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We all pay for the roads as a group. If a group of individuals goes together to buy a vacation home, a single member does not generally have the right to use that property in a way that hurts the other co-owners. To create an extreme example, one person would not have the right to knowingly booby-trap the vacation home (leave the gas on for instance) putting the next user at personal risk having no knowledge of the unexpected hazard. A drunk driver creates an unexpected hazard for other users of the road, and JohnFKennedy has done a good job citing the factual basis for that claim.
You raise an interesting point about cell phone use and driving. There is strong evidence to support that driver distractions increase hazardous driving. The evidence is less clear as to the severity of cell phone use as a hazard among the many types of distractions. Some studies rank hands-free as no better than hand-held phones in terms of risk. Other studies find that conversations with passengers and activities like eating as generate hazards equal to cell phone use. The ban on cell phones alone among driver distractions may be as much a reaction to a new technology as to the actual risk.
