Being partisan toward Democrats, apparently.
I don’t know why you feel such an irrestible need to steer this discussion to a topic that has been discussed ad nauseum. But, whatever gets you off, I guess.
So, I go back and read the posts you indicated. I am not impressed by anything other than your admission than you are trying to hang the “liar” sign around GWB’s neck “on a technicality”, as you say.
More to the point, I see your unqualified agreement with my statement in the abstract, which is not tainted by *who *may are may not be accused of lying, as being at odds with this:
Absent from your proof is 1) a statement that was untrue and 2) proof that he knew that particular statement top be untrue. For the speaker to be lying—by the metric of mine that you volunteered agreement with, both of these conditions have to be met. Your argument hinges on your use of “deceive” at the end of the first sentence. If it were a lie, by the definition you agreed with, the deception would have to be of the flavor: speaking an untruth one knows to be untrue. So you, again, need to 1) indentify the specific untruth and then 2) show that it was known to be an untruth.
I think the confusion stems from an attempt on your part, innocently, I believe to conflate lying with misleading.
A lie is simply that, an untruth that is stated while it is known to be untrue. You’ve agreed with that already. Now, while uttering lies is indeed a method of misleading, not every instance of misleading is a case of lying. Every politician, in my opinion, is guilty of misleading people. Everytime that sidestep a question and answer it in a way that does not directly answer the question—in hpes of us thinking they are—they are misleading us. A perfect exampleof this I saw yesterday on C-Span. Gingrich, who I greatly admire and I hope runs for POTUS,was asked if he would have attended the debate in Miami that was translated into Spanish. He vowed that he wold be happy to meet with any Hispanic group, debate anyone, blah, blah, blah, but he never siad he would, indeed, attend. Though, that was the impression you were left with. It was a misleading answer. You can find more examples of this almost every time a politician is asked a tough question.
I think much of the time when a politician argues for their side on an issue, they are misleading us. They give us only half the argument and/or skew the opposite position to make it appear weaker or more ridiculous than it actually is. I think this is “misleading”, though I don’t really have a problem with it. I view it as each side trying to give their argument the best shot.
Uh, maybe you’re not clear on the context of the OP’s question. Or maybe I’m not. Was the O’Reilly/Moore exchange not about lies in the context of the Iraq War?
The thing is, I reject your definition as inaccurate (and I regret not having thought about it sufficiently earlier in the thread). Your definition suggests that JRR Tolkien was a consummate liar, inasmuch as he wrote statements that he knew to be untrue. That’s silliness. The definition I offer–that a lie consists of an untrue statement told in a deliberate effort to deceive the audience–is far closer to how the word is generally used.
[quote]
Absent from your proof is 1) a statement that was untrue and 2) proof that he knew that particular statement top be untrue.
[quote]
- is amply demonstrated in that thread.
- is where the technicality came in. The dude clearly told an untruth in an effort to deceive. If moral distance between that and lying is nonexistent. It fits the definition. It is highly likely that, barring some sort of postmodernist approach that prevents anyone from ever truly knowing anything, Bush knew that the statement was untrue.
We may never enter someone’s mind completely; we cannot prove beyond a shadow of a doubt what anyone knew at any given point. That thread, however, demonstrates a point that honest conservatives accept: Bush lied about a report about yellowcake uranium in an effort to deceive the public into accepting his military venture.
Daniel
If Bush actually thought that what he presented was proof of Iraq’s WMD’s, he’s a complete idiot. If he knew it was false but tried to pass it off as true, he’s an evil liar.
Here is the pertinent portion of the OP:
I took that to be using an example to discuss the issue of what and what does not constitute a lie. Seems pretty clear to me, especially with the “regardless” clause, though I could be wrong as to what his intent was. He’ll have to speak to that himself.
Now, THAT is silliness. You’re disappointing me here. You are usually better then this. Oh well, I guees we’ll both be losing sleep tonight.
You attempt now to insinuate that my litmus test for a statement being a lie was intended to layout out ALL the components necessary for something to be a lie. It is genreally understood—as you popinted out in your reply to me—that statemetns intended as jokes, sarcasm, and fiction should be excluded from the discussion as to what makes a misstatement a lie. But now you want the definition to exclude those possibilities, too, thus building in more room for obfuscation and tap dancing. Come on, man. You know damn well that the litmus test I supplied could be expanded to exclude those things. What it would do more, though, is make things cumbersome. That baggage is not needed and would be unhelpful to the discussion as it would put a duller point on the debate, not a sharper one. As YOU stated, let’s simply agree that jokes, fiction, etc, are to be excluded for the purposes of this discussion. No one parsing this issue finds that difficult to do, except now, evidently, you, as you seek to wiggle your way out of an inconsistency. Now if you have rethought your agreement with my initial statement and no longer agree with it for substantive reasons, that is absolutley fair. But the reasons you brought up are beneath your usual level of discourse.
(bolding mine)
“clearly”? You must be kidding. And it all depends on what definition you use, doesn’t it. The one you agreed with—and evidently still agree with, if you exclude statements intended as jokes, sarcasm or ficional storytelling—causes you problems, doesn’t it?
So, everyone who disagrees with your assessment (even though it doesn’t pass the litmus test even you agree with when you leave out the noise of jokes, sarcasm and fiction) is “dishonest”. Can you not see the contortions you are putting yourself and your reputation through with this infatuation you have with labelling Bush a liar, even if it’s on a “technicality”? Come on, **LHOD. **
Look, it’s really very simple. You identify the specific statement made AND show that he knew it to be a lie, or you can’t fairly conclude that he is a liar. Why is that so difficult? Is that not the metric you wold demand someone use in accessing you and statements you might make? It is for me. Again, leaving the noise of fiction, sarcasm, jokes aside.
If you’d like to continue to parse what is or isn’t a lie in the abstract, I’m happy to participate. The Bush stuff has been done to death, though.
Watching two people who are unwilling to change their opinions in the face of new evidence argue is known to cause boredom, and in extreme cases, brain death.
This, and the rest of your post, appears to be a defense for an inferior definition based wholly around the idea that we all know what the definition is SUPPOSED to mean. That’s not particularly interesting.
Daniel
Inferior? Nope. I am wiling to state a definition and have it be binding across the board. You struggle to create a defintion that automatically includes concluding that what Bush lied. You’re doing thiings backwards. I would suggest that you rethink your position from a consistency standpoint. If the definition of lying that I supplied, taking into account what you suggest we omit (jokes, etc.), works in all cases but is problematic in one, perhaps the problem lies in your assumiing that that one instance is, in fact, and example of lying.
So I propose:
Lie (noun): A false statement known to be false by the person offering the statement. Something is a lie (barring jokes, sarcasm and storytelling for entertainment value) if and only if 1) the statement uttered is untrue and 2) the person issuing the statement knew it to be untrue at the time.
You agreed with the heart of this, then complained that it was inadequate because it didn’t take into account jokes, sarcasm and fiction. It now does that. Is this not now a good definition? If not, why not?
This is like asking if one would rather be poisoned by a rattlesnake or hemlock. That said, I’m glad they finally butted heads; they’re the only ones with skulls hard enough to come out of the ordeal without major injuries.
The concept of historical analogy itself is just grand, but I believe Mr. Moore was saying that the analogy between Hitler and Hussein is so ridiculous on its face that it should not even be considered. Hitler used his charisma to take advantage of the political climate of his country and take power in both Germany and Austria, and then immediately used it to create a systematically racist regime replete with death camps, horrible slave labor, etc.–then exploded outward, engulfing smaller nations at a terrifying pace. Hussein killed his own people, dictated, etc., but the similarities pretty much stop there: other than his bit of imperialism in the early 90s, from which he was quickly dissuaded, he seemed content to control just his neck of the woods. He killed his own people, sure, but not at a magnitude even close to that of Nazi Germany. Hussein’s Iraq was also not a significantly more dangerous place for Jews than any of its neighbors. Even Egypt, Israel’s freaking ally, is known to actively defame Jews in its state-run newspaper.
Mr. Moore knew that Mr. O’Reilly would latch on to any inch he gave him and scream about it at the top of his lungs until Moore either gave him a yard, walked out or shot him dead. He knew he had to avoid giving any credence whatsoever to any of the most ridiculous, far-fetched O’Reillian theories (which that comparison was), lest the whole debate turn into a meaningless shouting match.
WRT the lies, Bush didn’t argue for the invasion of Iraq based on Hussein’s imperialist goals (which are apparently piddling to nonexistent anyway), nor on Hussein’s dictatorship (which paled in comparison to many contemporary governments around the world), but based on the existence of a WMD program that he knew did not exist. The fact is that he knew what he was saying, was wrong. This has been established well enough that I’m not going to bother trying to prove it here; and even if he didn’t know it was wrong, well, it was, and now he’s spent billions of dollars of our money fucking up the world. If he were interested in finding out the truth, he could’ve spent some time gathering sufficient evidence to find out what it was, rather than making a guess and firing up the Rape and Kill Machine because he couldn’t find any dissenters within a 20 foot radius of his desk. Which brings me to the final comparison: we left Germany a safer place for democracy, while so far we’ve only turned Iraq into a more dangerous place for everyone and everything.
Your implication that I engineered the definition for Bush is totally wrong–it’s a definition that I pondered as an adolescent and that has served me well for two decades, before Bush the elder came into office.
Your definition means that “the eagle flies at midnight” is a lie. That’s absurd. Similarly, a story told to illustrate a point–Jesus’s parables, for example–are lies. Metaphors are lies. If I say you lie like a dog, I’m lying.
You might continue to add exclusions to your parenthetical statement, but that’s an inefficient form of a definition. All the exclusions share a single trait in common: with the exclusions, the speaker has no intent to deceive the audience.
Rather than create a laundry list, why not make the intent to deceive part of the definition?
Daniel
Since it doesn’t happen very often, I want to take the opportunity to say I agree with everything you said.
O’Reilly is right that, technically, yes, a “lie” involves some kind of intentional deception. An untrue statement which carries no intent to decieve is not a lie.
However, that’s not applicable to Bush vis-a-vis the Iraq WMD fiasco because Bush quite obviously DID intend to deceive people, not only about the strength of the evidence that Iraq had weapons, but also about the real threat that Saddam posed to the US even if he had them. He also knowingly lied about Saddam’s connections to al Qaeda.
The analogy to Hitler is laughable on its face.
:smack: Please pretend that was a sentence.
This issue is basically irrelevant anyway. Even if Bush believed there were WMD and that he had good evidence of that, he clearly either didn’t believe that the constituted the sort of threat he claimed they did if they got into the hands of the terrorists or he and his administration were criminally inept because they took absolutely no significant precautions to secure such sites that might contain such weapons, allowing them to be looted.
The Administration’s actions speak louder than words and their actions suggest that they did not believe their own propaganda or that they are dumber and more inept than dirt. You decide.
Well, I certainly won’t call you a liar. But I think you might see how given how the discussion has gone how one might get the impression that you were engineering it. But no matter now.
Okay. Since a lie must be intentional, that’s fine. Here you go:
**Lie (noun): A false statement known to be false by the person offering the statement which is said with the intent to deceive. Something is a lie if and only if three conditions are met:
- the statement uttered is untrue
- the person issuing the statement knew it to be untrue
- the person issuing the statement intended to deceive the listener, or reader, about the real world**
We can do it either way. The point is that whether we list exclusions or handle it with the intent to deceive, you are still stuck with numbers 1 and 2. If those conditions are not met, there is no lie.
I’ve seen this thrown around before. I can think of no instance when Bush did this. I may very well be wrong, but can I ask you to show when he committed this lie and what, specifically, it was?
Yes, that’s right. I was thinking something else, the claim that Bush said Saddam had soomething to do with 9/11. My mistake.
I thought I felt a disturbance in the force. 
Are you sure it wasn’t just a glitch in the Matrix?
Fluke Starbucker: Jeepers! What is it, Augie Ben Doggie? Did you feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced?
Auggie Ben Doggie: No, just a little headache.