While I of course disagree with O’Reilly’s debate style and just about every word that comes out of his mouth, I was surprised at how much more logically consistent he seemed in this interview than Moore, for example (slightly paraphrased):
O’Reilly: “It’s not a lie if you believe it to be true.”
Moore: “No, If you say something that’s not true, that’s a lie.”
Regardless of what Bush actually believed, does what Moore’s statement there make any sense?
O’Reilly: “From '33 to '41, Hitler was not a threat to us. You wouldn’t have invaded?”
Moore: “What, you want to talk about what happened after WWI? I’m talking about right now!”
Because it’s an improper analogy. Hitler was invading other countries, expanding his territory and threatening the shipping lanes. Was this what was happening in Iraq?
It’s not a lie if you believe it? O’Reilly’s taking honesty lessons from George Costanza? I’m with Moore here. It’s still a lie, no matter how much you want it to be true.
and it depends where the “evidence to the contrary” came from… if it was from a site like dailykos or moveon.org, well they kind of discredit themselves with their outrageous behavior, so… Just saying…
consider the source…
Look, I shouldn’t comment since I didn’t click on the link yet so I’m kind of just assuming here… Please forgive.
I’m tired and I don’t feel like clicking on the link just yet…
Although I don’t have to read the link to say what I just did - but still…
Both of them are playing fast and loose with semantics.
You are lying ONLY if you say something that you know to NOT be true. Sorry for the caps but emphasizing the important bits.
You can state a falsehood and NOT be lying if you believed it to be true. The statement may still be in error but you are not lying.
Of course part of the problem rests with people stating things as if they are facts when in reality they are educated guesses at best.
It is not illegitimate to anaolgize with history. Indeed history should be used to inform us about how to best respond to this or that today. Hard lessons have been learned and history can guide us in avoiding the same pitfalls. Alas most people ignore it thinking somehow the issues today are too different to use the past as an object lesson. History repeats itself for this reason and few seem to ever twig to this truism.
The problem is analogies are almost always faulty and gloss over important details. They can serve to put some ideas into perspective but you need to be REALLY careful to be sure you are comparing apples to apples as much as possible.
From '33 to '41 Hitler did not directly threaten the United States. But he was clearly bent on a road to war/total domination with hindsight being 20/20. I think one could reasonably argue he was a threat to the US well before '41.
The question is where do you draw the line? Where do you tell another country they have gone too far before going after them? It is a dicey question. Chamberlain’s appeasement obviously went too far in the, “We can talk this out” department. I think GWB’s head long rush into Iraq is the flip side of that coin.
I always thought of a lie as an intentional untruth. While I may believe (and possibly repeat) someone else’s lie, that wouldn’t be a lie on my part if I had no intention to deceive.
OR if you don’t CARE if it’s true or not, or if you simply dismiss anything you hear or see that brings up the possibility that it isn’t true. Is there any less dishonesty involved with those things? :dubious:
O’Reilly didn’t have the same attitude about the meaning of “is”, did he?
I’d say O’Reilly was right on the first, and both not exactly good on the second (assuming it’s an accurate understanding, not really interested in watching either of them go at it).
This is a classic example of two people talking past each other. I don’t know that either one of them is making “more sense” than the other, but it is certainly a true statement that you are not lying if you believe what you are saying is true. The Hitler analogy is eye rollingly stupid, and Moore should have just slapped that down right off the bat.
The more important issue is whether or not it was a good idea to invade Iraq when an how Bush did. It seems clear to me that the answer is “no, it was not a good idea”. Maybe that came out in another part of the interview, but getting caught up in a semantic argument or a false analogy with WWII is simply beside the point.
If by this you mean you avoid anything that might contradict your belief, then you don’t really believe it. To directly answer the OP’s first question, Reilly’s out-of-context point is accurate. It’s not a lie if you believe it to be true. It’s a lie if you intentionally tell something you know (or should reasonably suspect) to be false.
Moore’s counter in the OP (a paraphrase) is simply wrong. Moore’s counter should be along the lines in this thread–“How can you say he believed it when his behavior contradicted it?, etc.” Then the two could debate what Bush’s behaviors implied. But Reilly’s flat, out-of-context statement is inarguable, it seems to me, to answer the OP. After viewing the cite, I see that Moore did clarify his position, and it’s more nuanced than the Op suggested, whether or not you buy his assessment of Bush’s actions.
For example if you believe in God? Your argument makes no sense.
While it sounds a lot like eighth grade catechism I tend to agree with O’Reilly that a falsehood must be knowingly false to be a lie. However willfully withholding facts or information which you think have no bearing on an issue but which your opponent could logically use to argue that your position is wrong is every bit as deceitful as lying about the issue itself. I believe Bush does this.
As far as using history to determine our present course of behaviour it would be unusual in the extreme for us to have enough information about a situation to make an apt analogy. It is only in hindsight that we know that Hitler was an insane megalomaniac. If we are going to correct all of the wrongs in the world how do we decide what they are. Ninety-eight % of the world’s governments have decided that the death penalty is wrong and yet we still use it and the Supreme Court has in fact ruled that actual innocence of a crime is insufficient to obtain a new trial. Maybe there is ome government out there that thinks we should be a little more enlightened. Where exactly is the line that a government must cross before it can reasonably be interfered with?
For a statement to be a lie it has to **knowingly **be false. Period. When a statement is wrong, without the knowledge that it is so, it is a mistake. Period.
I’m always surprised that some people on SDMB can’t get this very basic concept down and it keeps coming up.
I agree. However, assuming we’re discussing whether Bush lied about WMDs in an effort to get us into the war, read posts 158-171. I believe the evidence is very strong that, even by a more restrictive definition of lying (i.e., you have to knowingly say something false in an effort to deceive people, thereby excluding sarcasm and jokes and fiction from the realm of lies), Bush did so.