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Lies II

edited August 2007 in Politics
So, Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) says that he's not gay and has never been gay. However, this is the reality and he pled guilty to disorderly conduct.

Is this a lie? What if he really believes he's not gay?

What about Representative Bob Allen? Is it a lie if he says he's not gay? Is it a lie if he pleads not guilty?

Why are all the Republican sex scandals so gay?

Should we believe GWB when he asks us to worry about Iran gaining nuclear capabilities, as he did in his speech yesterday? Didn't he lie when he said the same thing about Iraq?

Did GWB lie when he said two years ago that New Orleans would be rebuilt? Did he lie when he said in his speech this January that the Iraqi government would be held accountable? Didn't he say something a little different in his speech yesterday?
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Comments

  • Lies I can handle. Lies are understandable in most cases. It's basic human behaviour, and we learn it at a very young age.

    Hypocrisy is what busts my nuts.

    These bastards, who preach intolerance of all kinds, are so often caught doing the very thing they claim to despise. Preachers and conservatives who rail against gay marriage caught "on the job" with another man, morals crusaders caught snorting coke off a hooker's ass, that kind of garbage makes me want to puke. Truly, it's one of the few things in life that makes me angry.

    It saddens me to say it, but I think hypocrisy is why the world hates America (the government, anyway) right now.
  • edited August 2007
    Lies I can handle. Lies are understandable in most cases. It's basic human behaviour, and we learn it at a very young age.

    Hypocrisy is what busts my nuts.
    I understand the lies too. What busts my nuts is the trend I've noticed of people excusing the liars by saying that a statment is not a lie if you believe it to be true.

    Maybe we can agree on a modification. I propose that a statement is not a lie if the declarant has a reasonable belief that the statement is true. The reasonable belief should be measured by what a reasonable person would believe under the same facts and circumstances. This would exclude honest mistakes from the realm of lies, but would not exclude stubborn denials of reality of the "I'm not gay" or "There are WMDs in Iraq" variety.

    More hyposcrisy from the Republicans - Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), a socially conservative stick in the mud, was caught on the D.C. Madam's phone list.

    Hey - Can we say that Larry Craig's career is "stalled"? Maybe he's in his own private Idaho.
    Post edited by HungryJoe on
  • Craig should resign. The governor of his state is Republican so no Senate seat will be lost.

    Was Vitter caught on the hetero list or the homo list? Either way he is just trying to help out a local female owned business. Isn't that a good thing? ;)
  • I understand the lies too. What busts my nuts is the trend I've noticed of people excusing the liars by saying that a statment is not a lie if you believe it to be true.

    Maybe we can agree on a modification. I propose that a statement is not a lie if the declarant has areasonablebelief that the statement is true. The reasonable belief should be measured by what a reasonable person would believe under the same facts and circumstances. This would exclude honest mistakes from the realm of lies, but would not exclude stubborn denials of reality of the "I'm not gay" or "There are WMDs in Iraq" variety.
    I'm not going to bother arguing politics here, Joe, but I can't abide this "lie" argument one more time.

    You can no more lie without intent to deceive than you can murder without intent.

    You're a lawyer, Joe. You know that the insanity plea exists because a defendant can kill a person while existing in a dissociative state. A crucial element in murder is intent, and without it, a person is not guilty. Insane, maybe, but not guilty.

    In the same way, Bush promising to rebuild New Orleans within two years wasn't lying if he believed it could have been done. He might have been wrong; he might have been insane; he might have been misled.

    He might have been lying, but I don't know if he had intent to deceive.

    And that's the crucial component of lying. Just like I argued in the other thread, the very definition of a lie is giving inaccurate information or representation thereof with the intent to deceive. There can be no intent without knowledge; ergo, stupidity is a defense.
  • stupidity is a defense
    I'm pretty sure one of the cornerstones of common law is that stupidity is not a defense.
  • stupidity is a defense
    I'm pretty sure one of the cornerstones of common law is that stupidity isnota defense.
    You're equivocating legal defense with my statement that stupidity is different than lying. Perhaps I should not have used the word defense.

    A better statement is that stupidity lying.
  • A better statement is that stupidity lying.
    Sorry for the confusion.

    I'm not sure making a distinction between stupidity or lying really matters when you're talking about the people that run our country. Both are bad, neither are desirable. Either way the actions in question are inexcusable.
  • edited August 2007

    You're a lawyer, Joe. You know that the insanity plea exists because a defendant can kill a person while existing in a dissociative state. A crucial element in murder is intent, and without it, a person is not guilty. Insane, maybe, but not guilty.
    There are different degrees of murder. A defendant can be convicted of murder if he is found to have had the intentional, knowing, reckless, or negligent mental states. There's also felony murder - which doesn't require a mental state at all for a conviction.

    How do you find intent? One way is by a person's actions. If a person says they're going to do something and then fails to take any affirmative step to accomplish what they said they're going to do, is it fair to infer that the person intended to deceive?

    Why are you so forgiving of lying?
    Post edited by HungryJoe on
  • Let's simplify it even more.

    A reporter asks Barrack Obama if there are aliens at Area 54.

    Obama laughs at the guy and says, "No, of course there aren't."

    Obama becomes president, and finds out there ARE aliens at Area 54.

    Was he lying? Of course not.
  • edited August 2007
    Let's simplify it even more.

    A reporter asks Barrack Obama if there are aliens at Area 54.

    Obama laughs at the guy and says, "No, of course there aren't."

    Obama becomes president, and finds out there ARE aliens at Area 54.

    Was he lying? Of course not.
    A reasonable person under the same facts and circumstances may have said the same thing. It was a mistake.

    Your scenario is not equal to saying, "We'll rebuild your city", and then doing nothing. It's also not equal to saying "Iraq has been trying to buy yellow cake uranium from Niger" when a reasonable person should have known from many different sources that this was simply not true.

    What if you had to give a report, you knew that the results weren't going to be what you wanted them to be, so you gave the report a little touch-up? Would that be a lie?
    Post edited by HungryJoe on
  • Obama becomes president, and finds out there ARE aliens at Area 54.
    This right here is why anecdotal/hypothetical evidence is not acceptable in a debate about morals and ethics. Your hypothetical anecdote has absolutely nothing to do with the examples already offered in this thread, especially the opening post. So while I do not disagree with your statement, it doesn't mean anything in the context of this thread.
  • I'm president. I tell my aids to research, say, the cost of piracy to the corporate infrastructure. But, I tell them to only tell me information that shows it's costing billions. I then go and, not knowing the other side, talk about how piracy is costing us billions.
    Am I lying?
  • Your scenario is not equal to saying, "We'll rebuild your city", and then doing nothing.
    Did he unknowingly do nothing? No. He made a conscious decision to either underfund the project or sit on his hands.
    It's also not equal to saying "Iraq has been trying to buy yellow cake uranium from Niger" when a reasonable person should have known
    Should have known. Knowledge.
    This right here is why anecdotal/hypothetical evidence is not acceptable in a debate about morals and ethics.
    Ethical discussions are built on hypotheticals. While the seed of this thread was a discussion on our wonderful representatives, Joe's point is built on a premise introduced in an earlier thread. I have a problem with that premise.
    I'm president. I tell my aids to research, say, the cost of piracy to the corporate infrastructure.
    Yes, you are lying. You only told your aids to research one part of the argument -- a move that can't be justified without intent to deceive. And, as I argued above, intent to deceive is the crucial element in defining a lie.
  • edited August 2007
    Joe's point is built on a premise introduced in an earlier thread. I have a problem with that premise . . . [a]nd, as I argued above, intent to deceive is the crucial element in defining a lie.
    How do you measure the intent? If you don't have some objective measure, you'll always have someone that will say, "We can't tell if So-and-So was lying because we don't know whether he believed what he said was true when he said it." You'll have people saying every lie was simply a mistaken belief.

    I think there are some statements we can all agree were lies. How about "I did not have sex with that woman"? Many people would love for that to be considered a lie. There are others who, under your definition will say, "He really believed he didn't have sex with her, so it's not a lie".

    Do you propose to add something to clarify your definition, give some guidance for how to determine intent, or should we just be satisfied with always having people say such-and-such statement is not a lie because we can't know if the person who said it really believed it?
    Post edited by HungryJoe on
  • edited August 2007
    Dictionary.com: lie: A false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.

    Merriam-Webster: lie: a: An assertion of something known or believed by the speaker to be untrue with intent to deceive b: an untrue or inaccurate statement that may or may not be believed true by the speaker.

    YourDictionary.com: lie: 1. A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood.
    2. Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression.

    Cambridge Dictionary: lie: To say or write something which is not true in order to deceive someone.

    MSN-Encarta: lie: To deliberately say something untrue: to say something that is not true in a conscious effort to deceive somebody.

    The Free Dictionary: lie: To present false information with the intention of deceiving.

    Sorry, Joe, but the verdict is in. You have to have intent to deceive, and therefore knowledge, in order to lie. Being wrong isn't lying. You're just going to have to live with the uncertainty factor. That's part of life.

    The best you can hope to do is argue subsection b of the Merriam-Webster definition.
    I think there are some statements we can all agree were lies. How about "I did not have sex with that woman"? Many people would love for that to be considered a lie. There are others who, under your definition will say, "He really believed he didn't have sex with her, so it's not a lie".
    Well, the court agreed with me. President Clinton was never convicted of perjury for that statement, or other statements made in connection with his impeachment.
    Post edited by Jason on
  • A perjury is a lie made under oath about a material fact. Perjury is a subset of the universe of lies. All perjuries are lies but not all lies are perjuries.

    Sorry, Joe, but the verdict is in. You have to have intent to deceive, and therefore knowledge, in order to lie. Being wrong isn't lying. You're just going to have to live with the uncertainty factor. That's part of life.
    For right now, I'll ignore the fallacy of appeal to authority and remind you: I asked you if you had a modification or method of determining intent.

    If you're willing to sit back and say, "I don't need to think about it any longer. I looked it up in a number of dictionaries and the dictionaries all said that one has to have an intent to deceive for a statement to count as a lie. No further clarification is needed and I'm willing to live with the uncertainty.", then forgive me if I never allow you to say anything is a lie. The instant you say any statement is a lie, I'll remind you that we need to look into the heart of the declarant to determine his intent. Since we can't do that, we can never determine whether any particular statement is a lie. In fact, the term "lie" itself becomes meaningless. Perhaps you're more comfortable with "tuthiness".
  • edited August 2007
    I'll ignore the fallacy of appeal to authority
    Which appeal to authority?

    Learn your fallacies. Don't mis-cite them.

    Citing a source is not an ad verecundiam fallacy. Don't try to out-rhetoric me, mister.
    A perjury is a lie made under oath about a material fact.
    Then you need to provide some material evidence to prove it is a lie. We have an adversarial legal system in which guilt is not assumed; without evidence, then you can't assume a lie, either.

    Until you find some evidence -- a memo directly contradicting X person's statements under oath, testimony about conversations that unveil a lie, a hard-drive filled with damning evidence -- then you're SOL. "Everybody knows he's lying" isn't a viable statement by the prosecution.
    Post edited by Jason on
  • Lawyer vs. reporter. Who will win?
  • edited August 2007
    Ehh, I think that we can debate the efficacy of citing dictionary definitions in and of itself. They're simply authority. They're certainly not dispositive. Your wedding to the phrase "intent to deceive" is not what's in dispute. What is in dispute is your willingness to develop a definition that will allow people to say "That is a lie." without having others come and say afterwards, "Well, we don't know what the declarant believed, so we can't say it's a lie.", or at the very least, to work out a way in which we can be satisfied of a person's intent without trying to look into their soul. If you're at ease with the uncertainty of that situation, then we can throw the word "lie" out of the dictionary, because it won't have any meaning or any usefulness.
    A perjury is a lie made under oath about a material fact.
    Then you need to provide some material evidence to prove it is a lie. We have an adversarial legal system in which guilt is not assumed; without evidence, then you can't assume a lie, either.

    Until you find some evidence -- a memo directly contradicting X person's statements under oath, testimony about conversations that unveil a lie, a hard-drive filled with damning evidence -- then you're SOL. "Everybody knows he's lying" isn't a viable statement by the prosecution.
    No, we don't have to have material evidence. You're talking about perjury. That is a subset of the universe of lies. The word "material" modifies the word "fact". In order for there to be a perjury, the must be a lie under oath about a fact that is material (tending to make a particular fact or issue more or less true) to a particular case. The word "material" doesn't mean that material evidence is required. And anyway, we're not talking about perjury.

    Your requirement of material evidence might sound rational to you, but people determine whether statements are lies without the use of material evidence every day. If you want to talk about court, the fact finder can decide whether testimony is a lie based on it's mere whim. There's no need for material evidence. If you're going to require material evidence for life in general, then you'll probably never encounter a lie in personal relations, for how are you ever going to be able to produce the material evidence? Do you keep memos of all your personal conversations? Do you document everything you do? Even if all these documents existed, a potential liar could protect himself in your scheme by simply destroying all his documents. Are you really that forgiving of liars?

    Take the example of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Some people believe LBJ and McNamara lied. Some are more charitable and consider it a mistake.
    Here are some of the conversations between LBJ and McNamara. Here is what LBJ said to the American people. Notice any differences? Even McNamara said "We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action." Did LBJ lie? Did he mislead? Did he at least prevaricate? Under your definition, no one will ever be able to say he lied because anyone can respond that, "Maybe he believed it when he said it." That robs the word "lie" of its meaning and usefulness.

    Here is a good article comparing Bush's mendacity to LBJ's mendacity. Read it. It has a great link to a site full of Presidential tapes.
    Post edited by HungryJoe on
  • edited August 2007
    I'm just going to go ahead and appeal here to indisputable evidence: Star Trek the Next Generation. Watch "The Drumhead"
    Post edited by Jason on
  • Lawyer vs. reporter. Who will win?
    These two have way more endurance then I do. Wow.
  • Bonzai!!!11!111!one
  • edited August 2007
    Can we at least agree that this guy is lying?

    I guess not. If he really believes his story, he can't be lying, can he?
    Post edited by HungryJoe on
  • Can we at least agree thatthis guyislying?

    I guess not. If he really believes his story, he can't be lying, can he?
    For those who require a visual representation.
  • You know... Rym & Scott say that they're not gay and have never been gay... :P I think the reason so many of the scandals that get big press are the anti-gay-politician-discovered-in-a-gay-bathhouse types is because despite claiming to loathe hypocrisy, most people are secretly attracted to it. They delight in big hypocrisies being exposed, because it makes them feel more at ease with the huge ball of little hypocrisies that make up the average person's day-to-day life.
  • Why does the Senator owe us any explanation of his sex life? If he wants to tell us he's not gay, when he really is... that's fine with me. It's his voting record that matters - not his sexual orientation.

    As long as he didn't lie about his views when campaigning (thus deceiving voters), where is the harm?
  • Why does the Senator owe us any explanation of his sex life? If he wants to tell us he's not gay, when he really is... that's fine with me. It's his voting record that matters - not his sexual orientation.

    As long as he didn't lie about his views when campaigning (thus deceiving voters), where is the harm?
    The only harm I see is the illegal activity of soliciting. Of course, I also think that soliciting shouldn't be illegal, so...
  • Why does the Senator owe us any explanation of his sex life? If he wants to tell us he's not gay, when he really is... that's fine with me. It's his voting record that matters - not his sexual orientation.

    As long as he didn't lie about his views when campaigning (thus deceiving voters), where is the harm?
    The only harm I see is the illegal activity of soliciting. Of course, I also think that soliciting shouldn't be illegal, so...
    I think the broader issue with the Senator is the double standard that the Republic party seems to have laid out among the American public.
  • Is there no party that will fight for open trade, small government, fewer restrictions on freedoms, social justice, and civil rights? OMG, it's time for the LIBERTARIAN RAP.

    I no longer identify myself as a Republican.
  • I think the broader issue with the Senator is the double standard that the Republic party seems to have laid out among the American public.
    That's a problem for the Republican party. If you think that he should lose his job over this, might I remind you of a certain president that said that he never had sexual relations with his intern? That's why the liberals are treading lightly with this one.
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