There is a chronic attitude that is rampant within the Left to refer to anything they disagree with as a lie. It is everywhere amongst the left wing bloggers. We've seen this play out on the AMD thread today with RoadWalker accusing Limbaugh of lying, then when asked to support the claims, he posts a list of differences of opinion. That is not, by definition, a lie. Limbaugh says the economy is still bad, RW says it is great, therefore Limbaugh lied.
Lying, in any reasonable interpretation of the word, implies an intent to mislead. Websters defines it as either an untrue statement with an intent to deceive, OR to create a false or misleading impression (which implies an intent to deceive).
If, for example, someone posts an untrue remark here, and I interpret as truthful, if I repeat it believing it is true I am NOT lying; perhaps the original poster was lying, but when I repeated it it was not a lie, it was an untrue statement. Two different things.
RW posted here a week or so ago that I lie. Yet, he can't produce an instance of it. He can, no doubt, produce an instance where I was wrong, or perhaps where I repeated something I believed to be true but wasn't.
To know whether someone is lying you must know whether there was an intent to mislead.
There are difficult cases, obviously. When Obama repeatedly said the health care debate would occur IN THE OPEN on C-SPAN, was he lying? It sure as hell isn't happening that way. But it may be that he believed it then couldn't make it happen or didn't care whether it happened. I judge that not to be a lie.
OTOH, when he claims that the motivation for health care reform is to save money, THAT is a lie. Because it is an obvious intent to mislead (since any of the proposed legislation would substantially increase the cost of health care in the U.S.). |
