Here is an article about lying: On lying vs. being wrong Words matter and the current lack of restraint (by both sides of our political binary system) of the word lie troubles me. To be wrong, in error, or deceived is to not speak the truth. To lie is to intentionally deceive. It is to say something you know isnt true. Those are two very different things. Why is it important to recognize the difference between being wrong and lying? We are all often wrong. In fact being a Calvinist means that you know you are always at least a little off on everything, and sometimes greatly off on a lot of things. The word sin means missing the mark and none of us are perfect marksmen/women. To accuse someone of lying is a. charging them with something more malicious than just being wrong b. presuming to know the intentions of their heart. We can know at times that people are lying, but that usually requires some pretty detailed, specific and insider-like information. I remember when Democrats were claiming that Bush lied about Iraq. I never charged Bush with lying about that war because I didnt know what he knew and what he did not know. I believe he was wrong about WMDs, and that his judgment was faulty, but I couldnt make the charge that he lied. To make the charge that one is lying is a serious charge and the word should be taken seriously. Thats a lie is a charge that deserves examination and the obligation to deliver evidence lies with the accuser. You are a liar is a more serious charge still. It charges a person not only with telling lies (see above), but also with a pattern of lying, a more difficult charge to produce evidence for than one or a few lies. It is a charge against a persons character. I can't help but wonder: must a lie involve willful deception? I believe it does; I believe that's the only difference between being wrong and lying. When Obama said that people could keep their health insurance policies, he had no way of knowing that millions of private policies would be dropped after the ACA was signed. Since millions of people had their insurance cancelled by private companies (and I assume they quickly got new private policies), Obama would have had to have been conspiring with them in order to be willfully dishonest. The claim, "Obama lied," with respect to all Americans being able to keep their private insurance policies was wrong, but was it a lie?
---To say that he had no way of knowing, makes it sound as if the criteria for the dissolution of those policies was not objective, but subjective and arbitrary. If the criteria was objective, it implies that he was ignorant of the criteria. Either way, it doesn't look good for him.
I agree. He should not have said it. He had no way of knowing what private insurers would do in the future -- or doctors for that matter. This was a big gap in the ACA, which should have mandated that insurers not drop policies for a while.
How about the NSA spying? How about the Obama care isn't a tax? How about the sequester wasn't his idea? How about the NDAA? How about drone strikes killing innocents? How about he wouldn't raise any taxes that would increase a dime if you made under $250.000.00?
The left are full of hypocrites. How many years did y'all use the read my lips against Reagan cause all he did was reach across the table to the left and gave in to their demand for higher taxes. But the left us that as a lie against him for years. Still to this day some here even bring it up. Such HYPOCRITES!!!
That's a bit different. Bush Sr. knowingly and willfully said that he would not raise taxes, then knowingly and willfully put forth a budget that raised taxes. FWIW, I'm fine with him raising taxes because he did it to reduce the deficit. I never ridiculed Bush Sr for the tax raise. However, like Obama, he should not have made promises he couldn't keep. Obama could have issued an executive order putting a moratorium on cancellations for, say, half a year. Instead, he took the beating from the right and I admire him for that.
I think we dance around terminology too much as it is. lie is a lie. Anyone disseminating falsehoods, for whatever reason, are lying, & should be exposed. We can call it propaganda, or half truths, or pretend to have the greater good in mind. but it is a destructive force in humanity, & does damage to any society. The liars punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else. ~George Bernard Shaw Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle. ~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
But, of course, a lie is only a lie when the person makes a knowingly false statement. That was the gist of his OP. If you look at a hollow mask from the concave side and tell me it's convex (well known optical illusion), you're not lying - you're just wrong.
Yes, Obama and all the Democrats who dishonestly stated that Americans could keep their HC plans if they liked them, period, lied. They knew it was a falsehood and they kept repeating it anyway. That's why PolitiFact gave Obama the Lie of the Year, and he deserved it.
Yeah, Reagan said Reagan was such an accomplished liar he could look conservatives right in the face and tell them he was lying and they still believed him.
Simplistic OP. Whether or not a particular statement constitutes a lie or a mistake involves materiality and professional standards of conduct in many contexts... context being key. For example, when in court, lawyers who make arguments before a judge based on mistaken interpretations of law are usually treated exactly the same as intentional liars by the judge, may be disbarred, even prosecuted. Now, President Obama making statements of fact to the public about a gigantic piece of legislation is not the same as a lawyer arguing before a judge, true, but it's also not the same as a child or some average joe on the street making claims to whoever may be hanging around there. Moreover, O was not only a lawyer, but a law professor at a top school with an elite education. Claims of his not knowing or understanding likely consequences of his own legislation that any layman could foresee are tenuous claims at best. Folks with that pedigree are held to much higher standards of honesty, knowledge and understanding. I sure am, yet do not have a Harvard degree, was not a law professor at a top school, was not a federal legislator and have never been President of the United States. So it's just as disingenuous to dismiss the President's statement as an "honest mistake" within proper context as it would be to classify it as a felonious fraud on the public for which he could be prosecuted. In proper context, O's statement likely -is- a lie, but no worse than any of the other myriad lies politicians tell every day.
A lie is willful deception. Just because someone is wrong about something doesn't mean they are lying.
Liar a person who is averse to change and holds to traditional values and attitudes, typically in relation to politics.
