Why the need to cry "Lie"?

Great Debates
41

OK, rather than be just, lets be generous. While it is proven that the accused murdered his parents, lets not forget that he is an orphan…

I am convinced by your shrewd skills with semantic parsing. In this one instance, there is reason enough to believe that maybe, just maybe, he was not provably guilty. The indictment is thereby amended, that the accused has not told 180 bald-faced lies in order to gain the highest honor we can bestow, but only 179 bald-faced lies.

You may proceed with your end-zone boogie, counselor. Be advised that any intontation approximating “neener-neener!” will be grounds for contempt.

42

If we stop supporting politicians who lie then please tell me who we can vote for? Do we just vote for the person who lies the least?

43

In my book, if someone makes a statement they know to be false, or with reckless disregard of whether it’s verifiably true or not, in both cases it’s a lie.

44

If you are saying that we should always say “lied or is mistaken,” I think it’s very difficult in some of these situtions for the speaker to be mistaken. For example, Sarah Palin knows perfectly well that she was in favor of the Bridge to Nowhere, and that she only decided against it once Congress decided that Alaska was allowed to spend the funds elsewhere. There is no way to mistakenly describe teaching kindergarteners about avoiding sexual predators as “comprehensive sex education.” (http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Multimedia/) - click on Education on right tool bar.

Now here is more of a distortion:

[QUOTE=factcheck.org]
With its latest ad, released Sept. 10, the McCain-Palin campaign has altered our message in a fashion we consider less than honest.
[/QUOTE]

It was certainly deliberate, but it’s not quite far enough off base to be an outright lie. There have been false and misleading attacks on McCain. But they haven’t come from Obama or had any association with him.

I’m willing to grant McCain his mistakes, and Lord knows, he’s made plenty of them. Surpisingly, Iraq and Pakistan do not share a border, and Al Qaeda does not have a presence in Iran. The Sunni Awakening began quite a while before the surge in troop levels, and McCain really did say that he needed to be educated in economics, whether or not he remembered it during the Republican debates. Putin is not the president of Germany. Oh, and for Obama, we have fifty states, not fifty-seven; he doesn’t err often, but when he does, it’s a whopper. Those were all mistakes, made in perfectly good faith.

But when people are making claims about their opponent’s policies and saying things that are not what their opponent says about his policies, it’s pretty hard to believe it’s a mistake and not a lie. These things tend to be carefully crafted, not off-the-cuff. Sarah Palin’s speech has been pretty much the same speech at every place she’s spoken; it too was carefully crafted. The only times people ad lib are when McCain and campaign staff talk to the press - they don’t yet trust Palin to do so much. (I’m guessing they wish McCain wouldn’t either.) Carefully crafted speeches and commercials are rarely based on mistakes. They aren’t something that when someone explains the truth to them, they smack their foreheads and immediately withdraw the ad or change the speech. Therefore, when they are factually incorrect, it’s pretty safe to believe they are lies, not mistakes.

45

No, I didn’t.

Perhaps it was a touch hyperbolic, but in my opinion, just a touch. Your opinion may differ, but I used the term as I intended.

46

Is this an honest question? My honest answer is that one should always vote his or her conscience.

If we stop supporting politicians who lie, perhaps we’ll get more who do not.

47

Even if preface it with weasel words like “I’ve heard that…”

48

OK.

Deep breath.

The debate in this thread is WHY.

You’ve all done a very good job of demonstrating that you really really like to use the word “lie” when discussing a politician you don’t like, and you will use that word without even considering whether an untrue statement was a knowing untruth (as clue-me-in so aptly demonstrated).

Please. Let’s now think about WHY.

Why does it feel better to call a politican a liar versus a doer of any other type of bad thing?

49

Interesting. I don’t see any need to brand someone a liar for the occasional political spin. I’m disturbed by the fact that both parties seem to accept lying as a necessary evil of politics and the line between political spin and purposeful and malicious deceit seems to be shifting to a point where honorable behavior has no value and dishonorable behavior has few negative consequences.

We need to accept our politicians as humans who will occasionally stretch the truth and leave out certain information. I hope we’re smart enough to reject as unacceptable. a continuing pattern of self serving deceit concerning policies that have a serious effect on the masses .

Quibbling over what is technically a lie and what isn’t seems like a waste of time and energy. " I did not have sexual relations with that woman" It’s more productive to look at patterns of behavior when it comes to votes and public policy and try to determine who’s interests are being served.

50

It is an honest question. I agree with you. In an Email to a conservative friend I wrote.

“This isn’t a game where we can root for our team and walk away when the game ends. There’s a lot more at stake than that. The future of our nation, our children and grandchildren. Both Democrat’s and Republican’s have to start looking at themselves with the same critical eye they cast on the opposing party and start the process of cleaning up the corruption and dishonesty in Washington.”

I don’t believe this admin represents the honest hard working republican conservatives I know. My guess is for the same reason Democrats tend to overlook the flaws in their own party members my conservative friends want to believe the republican party is ultimately still in the hands of those who share their
principles. The friend I wrote this to told me he thinks the Bush admin made mistakes but during a hard time historically {that means 9/11} they still tried to do what they thought was best for the country. You and I may have a hard time understanding that line of thought but I think we have to accept it’s sincere and find a way to communicate with honest conservatives without ridicule or derision.
I think we do this in a several ways.
By assuming the average conservative we disagree with also wants what is best for our common nation, even though we may disagree on what’s best.
By trying to apply the same standard of honesty and integrity to our own party of choice as we expect from the opposition. {controlling and recognizing our own bias}
By not treating the important matters of policy like they are some team sport we are trying to win.
By having the patience and persistence to try to keep communications open between honest conservatives and honest liberals and moderates and reject dishonesty and corruption from either party. Republicans need a house cleaning but let’s not pretend Democrats don’t. Our slogan can’t be “Vote Democratic. We’re corrupt but not as much”

51

Obama smokes. You can go there if you need to find a way to say he is an arsonist. Starting fires several times a day. Repubs do not need much more than that.

52

For starters, where have I done what you are saying in this post? I have looked quite closely at the differences between lies and mistakes in post #44. I like to think I’m part of “all.” And as I pointed out, carefully crafted messages (which is to say commericals and speeches) are highly unlikely to be mistakes - on either side. If they are mistakes, there is still no excuse for them. Off-the-cuff remarks are likely to be mistakes, and they are legion. Obama isn’t too bad, but Biden has a long established record of blunders, as does McCain. They’re the verbal equivalent of typos, and no one much would care if not for manufactured outrage by the press and the offenderati.

I also have not referred to anyone as a liar. Nor will I, particularly not the candidates themselves. That some of his campaign staff are liars, there can be no question - these are the people who claimed in 2000 that John McCain’s adopted daughter was his natural daughter by a black woman in South Carolina, and the people who were involved in the Swift Boating of John Kerry, which is factually inaccurate according to virtually everyone who served on his boat (even the one person who disagreed wasn’t there at the time of the incident he disagrees about, IIRC).

But the candidates don’t make the ads, most candidates (Obama excepted) don’t write their own speeches (even Obama has help), and from what I’ve heard on the various news shows, they often have to be persuaded by their campaign staff to adopt a particular tactic. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for example, was practically begged by one faction of her campaign staff to make far more egregious attacks on Obama than she would agree to. The candidates are ultimately responsible, but in the heat of the race, especially if they are looking to be behind, allowing some lies to slip through in a few campaign ads doesn’t make a man a liar. On the other hand, if it becomes the rule, rather than the exception, then you have to start wondering just how firm the principles of the candidate are.

53

I agree, although in reality that’s only useful to a point. It’s great that you want what’s best for America, but, for example if you think that what is best for America is for the wealthiest small segment of the population to be disproportionately benefitted by our tax policies at the expense of the middle class or the poor, or an adequate social net, then you and I don’t agree on what’s best for America, and thus the phrase “best for America” has lost any utility in the discussion.

Fine, but it does no good to pretend that any wrongdoing makes everyone equal.

Show me where such honest conservatives are. We hear from few on these boards who are remotely bothered by what has happened over the past 8 years. More importantly, there’s relatively little general movement to any sort of housecleaning. Roughly three quarters of Republicans continue to believe that the Bush administration has done a good job.

The only house cleaning I’m aware of is that Democrats who are afraid to fight forcefully for Democratic principles need to be thrown out. Other than that, you seem to continue to perpetuate the assertion that the degree of wrongdoing over the past decade has been equivalent. It has not. Please educate yourself on the scandals of the Republicans and the Democrats over the past 8 years.

For historical sake, you might also look into the scandals and wrongdoing of the New Deal Era. It’s a great demonstration of the idea that Democrats can institute one of the greatest periods of government involvement in working for the better of the country and doing so in a manner as free from corruption as could be conceivable.

If you do want an honest consideration of the matter, you’re definitely going to have to drop the completely unsupportable idea that the housecleaning that is needed is the same for both parties.

54

Again, you are attempting to suggest that I, or others, would call people liars simply because we don’t like them or it feels good. That is, rather than it being an objective fact that these people have lied, you want to turn it into a subjective bias driven by some kind of agenda.

You seem to have some particular concern about the word “lie.” What is so aversive about saying that someone “lied” rather than “did not tell the truth”?

Why do you insist that I’m calling these particular individuals liars simply because I do not like them?

Do you think that Sarah Palin or John McCain have lied about anything? Or has everything they’ve been saying that was not true an “unknowning untruth”? Why is that, do you think?

I do think that Sarah Palin is a pathological liar. I think this particularly because in addition to the several self-serving lies she has been shown to have told, she has also lied about the teleprompter breaking down, which doesn’t appear to serve any real purpose (since her speech was well-presented anyway).

55

I was just browsing another thread, and noticed that Rand Rover described Obama as having “slick willied” his way out of Michelle Obama’s “proud” comment. Why am I wasting time debating about concerns regarding the use of the term “lie” with someone who makes comments such as that?

56

While on the whole during my lifetime (1956-present) the Democrats have been cleaner at a national level, they have a long and quite robust history of quite remarkable corruption, particularly in the pre-FDR days, but also well after. Richard Daley had a “machine” in Chicago and continues to be, er, highly organized; likewise apparently machine politics ran northern Jersey with an iron fist. Labor unions were in cahoots with both the Democratic party and organized crime, and a lot of the Dixicrats were pretty iffy. And let us not forget the other four of the Keating five were all Democrats.

I remember reading what was almost certainly an apocryphal story about LBJ once, which struck me as summing up the man’s both good and bad sides very well. According to the story, in his early career, he and some others were in some graveyard gathering names of potential “voters” to register, and one of the others complained that some of the headstones were too hard to read. LBJ snapped back “Now, Joe, those citizens have every bit as much right to vote as the other people here. You get their names!”

Now I’m sure lying was involved in all of these cases of corruption, but the discussion in this thread hasn’t been about that kind of lying. It’s about the more recent (at least in the past fifty years or so) gross misrepresentation of either one’s own record or the policies of the opponent. The focal point seems to have been Karl Rove, whom I have long considered the most dangerous man in America.

The other kind of untruth that has been very big in the past eight years has been the pseudo-facts about Iraq and the opacity of the White House. Much of the Iraq part has been the doing of Dick Cheney, and I personally believe it was done knowingly, although I also believe it was done with what he honestly believed were good intentions for the nation. The opacity part seems to have largely been Karl Rove again, and absolutely was done knowingly. Both men appear to have shielded the president from the worst of the decisions so that if things were investigated too deeply, the ultimate responsibility would rest with them rather than the president - certainly an act of loyalty.

McCain was highly supportive of the Iraq part of things - to the point of recommending attack Iraq on 9/12/2001, if I’m not mistaken, and also to suggest on (I think) Jay Leno (but it could have been a Sunday morning news program), that the anthrax attacks came from Iraq, a theory which apparently originated from and ended with the White House. But there I’m perfectly willing to say he was mistaken. I personally find McCain’s judgment in foreign affairs to be, shall we say, considerably less than sterling, so mistakes in that arena don’t surprise me in the least. He’s a highly impulsive man, a lot like Joe Biden. They both tend to say things that, looking back, they probably shouldn’t have said. THe big difference between them seems to be that McCain also flies off the handle pretty easily, while I’ve never heard that about Biden.

57

Well, don’t forget Tammany Hall, Oy!.

58

Feel better? No. The simple answer is that we call a politician a liar because he lied. Your posts above seem to be saying that it is not true that Republicans lie every time they open their mouths. True enough. What you haven’t done is to give us reasons why the lies mentioned aren’t.

59

Well, first of all, most of us are not calling the politicians liars. We do call some of the things they say lies. This feels better because it has some resemblence to reality. Calling McCain an ax murderer would not.

Second, very few of them have committed arson, burglary, theft, murder, etc. So it would be no more satisfying to say they did than it would be for me to say that I won a race that in fact I placed second to last in. Many of them have sold themselves to various lobbyists, and you won’t find any shortage of people referring to politicians as whores or prostitutes. And I’m sorry, but that is going to be weighted more against McCain, whose campaign staff heavyweights are primarily lobbyists, and whose contributors are in large part lobbyists. Obama’s staff and funding is far less dependent on these and it’s therefore assumed that he is less influenced by them.

For example, Sarah Palin is going around the country with John McCain lauding the fact (of whose truth I don’t know) that she “stood up to Big Oil” in Alaska, which produces nearly 20% of the US’s energy (true, if you consider 13% to be nearly 20%). But the economic policy laid out for McCain by Phil Gramm wants to reduce taxes on big oil by another $4 billion. Again, it’s not an out and out lie. But the overall implication is misleading as all get-out. And Sarah Palin also says on every stump that she fought against earmarks during her tenures as mayor and government, when in reality, she apparently got a lobbyist to try to get her hands on every penny of federal money she could get - almost $27 millionfor a town of six to nine thousand people (IIRC), and $198 millionher first year as governor. She says she’s worked for lean government and reform, yet she increased the city sales tax (about as regressive a tax as exists) and still left this tiny city in debt, almost $25 million according to at least Wiki. She billed the statefor nights she spent in her own house, plus expenses to get there and back from the capital (Legal, but it’s not usually done - elected officials typically don’t bill the government for days at home, especially when they’re there more days than not, which Palin was). Unless she has serious issues with her memory, she is not mistaken; she is seriously misrepresenting her own record, or put more simply, she is stretching or lying.

She tried to sell the plane on EBay at a profit, but failed to - ended up selling to a friendly broker at considerable loss. McCain’s the one who’s told that story, so I’ll willingly give him the benefit of the doubt and say it’s a mistake or a misunderstanding.

[QUOTE=Hentor the Barbarian]
Well, don’t forget Tammany Hall, Oy!.
[/QUOTE]

And, as always, Hentor, words to live by. :smiley:

60

Is politics about reasoned debate? I have several hard working honest conservative friends and I believe there are millions like them out there. It still surprises me that they don’t see or believe that the smaller group of people who are dominating the republican party now are inveterate liars who do not have their interests or principles at heart.

If it’s to be a discussion of ideas and what social and economic systems best serve our society I’m all for it. Most of the time it’s an emotional appeal without much reasoned debate. We must try and understand the emotional aspect of it as well as the issues and that ain’t easy. I don’t think name calling is a productive way to deal with it , even when the name fits.