As I was three days pondering the curiosities surrounding religion and politics (here, here, and here), two commenters were peppering me with questions about honesty. They came at the topic from somewhat different angles, but both of them really, really wanted to know what I had to say about President Bush’s many lies.
When I replied that I knew of no lies told by Mr. Bush, they were taken aback.
But you have to understand, they live in a different world than you and I. They live in an alternate universe, where an evil George Bush stole two elections, told a bunch of lies, started a war, shredded the Bill of Rights, and tortured prisoners.
They know these events happened almost as well as they know their shoe size. Naturally, knowing what they know, they attribute wickedness or ignorance to the supporters of the tyrant. When they come across one who is to all appearances a sober and conscientious observer, and a Christian besides — here I refer to myself — they are sorely puzzled, and who can blame them?
One of them even asked, “what do you think of [Bush’s] deceptions that led us into war?”
You see what I mean? The questioner takes as a given that we were led into this war because of some deceptions by George Bush, and just wants to know what I think of them. I, on the other hand, am unaware of any deceptions by George Bush, and I happen to know the war started when we were attacked by terrorists. It’s like we’re on two different planets. “What do you think of the orange hippos who ate the Catskill Mountains?” would make about as much sense to me as this question.
Where does one even begin to answer a riddle like that, from a person like that? Not with a brush-off answer, like “get lost,” or “sez you,” but with a real attempt to explain how things are on my planet? Well, I don’t know if it’s the ideal place to begin, but I have decided to begin with The “Bush Lied” Flow Chart!
The “Bush Lied” Flow Chart is a handy visual representation of the four criteria which discern a lie from an assertion that is not a lie. (These criteria are the same for anyone, of course, not just George Bush, but I’m calling it The “Bush Lied” Flow Chart because I’m pretty sure I’ll get more links this way.)
To use the flow chart, just take any claim of dishonesty and run it through the four diamond-shaped tests. The answers to the questions in the diamonds will lead you to either “Lied” or “Did Not Lie.”
Rather than “Yes” and “No,” I have labeled the answers “Definitely” and “Maybe Not,” to underscore the principle of the benefit of the doubt. If there is any reasonable doubt at any point in the lie-detecting process, the answer is “Maybe Not,” and the assertion cannot be judged a lie.
If this standard seems overly fair to the President, just imagine the test were being applied to all of your assertions, and see if you think it’s too fair. Besides, if Bush has really told as many lies as all that, surely one of them should be detected by the chart.
Test 1: DID HE SAY IT?
The first test is whether he really said what he is accused of saying. If there is a videotape, or a transcript, or a crowd of disinterested witnesses, the answer is “Definitely.” If instead it was an alleged private remark to someone with an axe to grind, then “Maybe Not.” Here’s a real-world example, from one of my commenters:
Did Bush tell the truth when he said that Harriet Miers was the most qualified person in the U.S. to serve on the Supreme Court?
This accusation fails Test 1, since Bush never said that. Consulting the chart, I see that no further tests are necessary. Did Not Lie.
Test 2: WAS IT UNTRUE?
Only untrue assertions can be lies. True ones fall under the not-lies category. For our example, let us take the infamous “16 words” in the 2003 State of the Union address. Bush said:
The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
We are certain that Bush said this. But it was true, and still is. Consulting our chart, we have to come down on Did Not Lie. But let’s take a trickier one, this one from my commenter:
When he said anyone ‘involved’ in the Plame leak would be fired, how do we judge his honesty with Rove in the Oval Office?
See, here you have to use some common sense. If you were mugged, and I swore to arrest anyone involved, would I then have to arrest you for being ‘involved’ as the victim? Common sense and usage would dictate otherwise. Since Bush might have been using ‘involved’ in this “involved in a guilty sort of way” sense, the answer to “Was it untrue?” is “Maybe Not.” Conclusion: Did Not Lie.
Test 3: DID HE KNOW IT WAS UNTRUE?
Only deliberate untruths can be lies. Here the process gets tougher, because we are judging the interior state of a man’s mind, which is not always easy. Still, there are ways. Ideally, if the man himself later confesses that he knew he was telling an untruth (as did Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon), it’s a slam-dunk. Barring that, we are forced to apply a reasonable guess. We have to ask, are we quite sure he would have known this assertion to be untrue? If it’s regarding something he had done himself (like whether he had an affair, or whether he was in Cambodia on Christmas Eve), we can say “Definitely.” But if he might not have known, it’s “Maybe Not.”
If I knew of any assertion by Bush which made it even this far into the flow chart, I’d put it here as an example.
Test 4: WAS IT HIS INTENT TO DECEIVE?
This test doesn’t really have much bearing on Bush specifically, but it is here for the sake of completeness. Many deliberate untruths are told all the time without being lies, by writers of fiction, comedians, satirists, and the like. For instance, the stories on Scrappleface are completely untrue, but since the writer doesn’t intend to deceive anyone into believing them, he is not lying.
Well, it’s a beginning at least. I don’t harbor any illusion that it will lead to complete understanding between our two worlds, but I hope at least to have given the visitors a glimpse of my planet. It’s not a perfect planet. In fact, we’re in a very brutal war just at the moment, but at least we didn’t start it. And we still have most of the Bill of Rights. And our president is far from perfect, but he is honest.
Breakfast: 11/8/2005
Try one of these specials with your breakfast:
Mudville Gazette has a prayer request
Cranky (Six Meat Buffet) says “Sorry…”
Lost in Lima Ohio is following the story of a monster
Confederate Yankee catches the Brady Center lying…
A suggestion for improvement: Either the “Did Not Lie” end-point should be renamed to “Unable to Tell”, or the “Maybe Not” arrow should be renamed to “Definately Not”. Otherwise the flow chart is biased, and therefore without merit.
How to spot a lie
The volume of lies is increasing at somewhere between twice and 4.5 times the rate of inflation, depending on your choice of information sources; in fact, the volume is growing…
Luke: As I thought I had explained, the chart is biased, in favor of a presumption of innocence. If you think that this principle is without merit, and are willing to relocate to New York, I hear “60 Minutes” is hiring. Good luck!
Sean
I am dumbfounded and disappointed. We just do not speak the same language. I really wanted a sincere discussion. But it seems that you want to play games with technicalites and hurl Republican talking points. Clearly I do not understand what the word “know” means. You claim that I know that an “evil George Bush stole two elections, told a bunch of lies, started a war, shredded the Bill of Rights, and tortured prisoners.” I certainly do not know all of these things. Some of them I see as totally inaccurate, and some I am suspicious about. The only one that I “know” is that Bush has lied. And this difference is important. You undestand that when this administration says they “know” somehing; it really just means that they suspect it might be true or that someone told them it was possibly true. I actually thought that they meant that they knew it.
Your flow chart renders the word “lie” meaningless. One can never have “definite” knowledge of someone’s “intentions.” It is to combat this kind of fatuousness that I tried to talk about deception and dishonesty.
1. I am the commenter who asked “Did Bush tell the truth when he said that Harriet Miers was the most qualified person in the U.S. to serve on the Supreme Court.” You say “Bush never said that.” On October 4th, Bush held a news conference. As usual, he made some opening comments, at the end of which the following occurred:
BUSH: With that, I’ll be glad to take some questions.
QUESTION: Mr. President, of all of the people in the United States you had to choose from, is Harriet Miers the most qualified to serve on the Supreme Court?
BUSH: Yes. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have put her on.”
(The transcript of this conference is available at: http://www.detnews.com/2005/politics/0510/04/01-337327.htm)
The theme of the second question in the news conference was whether he picked her because he didn’t want a big fight with Democrats and whether or not he was concerned about charges of cronyism:
BUSH: Well, I just described to you why I picked Harriet. I’ll be glad to go over it again if you like ( He then reviewed some of her qualifications.,) and said
“”I picked the best person I could find”
and to a follow up, he said
BUSH: “I just answered: I picked the best person I could find”
Unless you are playing a really silly game with the language, your statement that “Bush never said that” is not true.
2. Ref the 16 words: The President had wanted to use these words in a previous speech. They were removed because U.S. intelligence analysts said that there was no evidence at all of it’s being accurate. If you want to argue an innocent mistake, I might accept that. But to argue that it is true is a distortion. An honest person would have said, “well the Brits think he’s been doing this, but our guys can find no evidence of it.”
I just uttered the following 7 words out loud: “Sean has finally stopped beating his wife.” So when I see your neighbor, Mrs Robinson, and say ” I heard that Sean has finally stopped beating his wife,” am I being honest?
Clearly Rove was “involved in the leak” He spoke to reporters about it - I don’t follow how he is the victim (the one who is mugged) in this situation at all.
3. That you are able to judge what Clinton and Kerry definitely knew, and not Bush, suggests that your goal is to reduce this to a silly political argument. I would be just as happy to discuss how Clinton’s Christianity comports with his honesty as I am to discuss Bush’s. I suspect that you would simply say that Clinton is not a true Christian.
This would prevent me from learning anything about Christianity , politics and honesty. But then your approach is preventing me as well.
I never thought that describing someone as having a ‘blind faith in God’ was insulting, but then I never knew it meant that you had to be willfully blind to see the truth.
I too am dissapointed. I guess we cannot have a sincere discussion.
Your Miers “lie” is so trivial, so picayune, that it wouldn’t even bear mentioning, except that you keep bringing it up, and I sincerely wish to speak to your concerns. But really, is that it? Is that the Bush lie? I was not familiar with that interview, so I retract the “Bush never said that” statement. But it still fails Test 1. I would put that at about the level of someone who, when asked what time it was, said, “Eight o’clock. Well, more like 8:30. Yes, the time is 8:30.” The first answer (8:00) was untrue, but he corrected it — twice — right away, and so the only assertion to be judged is the second one.
The “16 words” were just plain true, is all. Not in a playing games sense, but in a really true sense. They would have been just as true without the first six words.
Rove “talked to reporters,” yeah, but it was because reporters called him on the phone and he answered the phone. The reporters chatted him up about the Plame leak, which had already happened before they called, and prior to which he knew nothing at all about Valerie Plame, not even her name.
I wrote the above comment as I was hurrying to an appointment, so it was necessarily terse. I have a few minutes now to fill in the gaps.
First of all, I’m afraid I have to retract my retraction. In my haste, I didn’t notice five important words. The reporter did ask if Miers was the most qualified “of the people in the United States you had to choose from” (emphasis added). So even Bush’s initial “yes” could not possibly be taken as an assertion that “Harriet Miers was the most qualified person in the U.S. to serve on the Supreme Court,” even with all of Bustard’s word-parsing skills. It fails Test 1 because that is not what he said. Like I said.
I do not wish to belabor such an obvious point, so everyone but Bustard is excused from reading the following.
The fact that Bush immediately rephrased the assertion to “best” instead of “most qualified,” which I already noted above, only removes it even further from your already-negated accusation. The “most qualified” person for the job might be whoever has the most knowledge and experience in Constitutional law; but his “best” available choice would have to have additional attributes besides mere qualification.
Questions such as judicial temperament and philosophy must be considered along with mere legal qualifications. And so must the will of the Senate and the electorate. (Harry Reid, the liberal minority leader, is the one who recommended Miers to Bush in the first place.) Her sex surely was a consideration, but here Bush was trying to acquiesce to the consensus of the Senate and the public. At the time, there was a strong drumbeat to replace O’Connor with a woman. Age is another valid consideration. (If the most qualified jurist in the country is 94, he should not be appointed.) And foremost, the nominee must actually want the job. We know he approached many candidates, but we don’t know who turned him down.
This whole mix of considerations must be weighed, according to what the chief executive thinks are the right weights, in order to come up with the “best” available. Harriet Miers was it. It is silly to question Bush’s opinion that she was the best he could find, according to his own criteria. As he himself noted, he would not have nominated her otherwise!
Bustard, while I do wish to satisfy your curiosity (though the strength of this wish is fluctuating), I cannot devote an hour to the patient refutation of each falsehood you chance to utter. I was hoping that by patiently deconstructing a few of your brickbats, I could thereby illustrate a method, a rational process, which you could then apply to your own thoughts before inflicting them on the world at large, or at least on me.
The four criteria which I expounded for discerning a lie are not a silly political argument. They are bedrock principles, a common ground to which you would have to assent before I could further discuss honesty or many other topics with you. If you will call truths lies and I will not, we cannot proceed. But thanks for commenting.
But an interesting question just occurred to me, which only Bustard can answer. If talking about the Plame leak makes someone ‘involved’ in the Plame leak, and if everyone involved in the Plame leak must be fired, how could you promulgate such a personnel rule without being fired yourself? It would seem all but impossible to explain this policy without violating it.
“Employees are not allowed to talk about something, or they will be terminated.” “What can’t we talk about, boss?” “I can’t tell you that.”
Just wondering, is all.
[…] Sean Gleeson » The “Bush Lied” Flow Chart! The “Bush Lied” Flow Chart! As I was three days pondering the curiosities surrounding religion and politics (here, here, and here), two commenters were peppering me with questions about honesty. They came at the topic from somewhat different angles, but both of them really, really wanted to know what I had to say about President Bush’s many lies. […]
Hi Sean. Nice chart. I’ve responded to your post on my website.
Here’s the link and the introduction:
http://www.metathingy.com/2005/11/09/did-bush-lie/
Did Bush Lie?
Recently I’ve been enjoying an interesting exchange of views with Sean Gleeson over at his blog. Earlier today, Sean wrote that I…
“…live in an alternate universe, where an evil George Bush stole two elections, told a bunch of lies, started a war, shredded the Bill of Rights, and tortured prisoners”
If it is indeed true that I live in an alternate universe, then I am gravely disappointed that it does not feature starships, talking robots, and lightsabers. I hope that if I were going to live in a world of my own imagining, then I would do better than this.
Sean then goes on to present a nifty flowchart for determining whether or not Bush has lied. The flowchart can be represented as four questions, or “tests,” as he calls them:
* Test 1: DID HE SAY IT?
* Test 2: WAS IT UNTRUE?
* Test 3: DID HE KNOW IT WAS UNTRUE?
* Test 4: WAS IT HIS INTENT TO DECEIVE?
If the answer to all of these questions is “definitely,” then it is concluded that President Bush lied. If even one of the tests fails, then President Bush is presumed innocent. Based on Sean’s earlier comments, I assume that “definitely” here means “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Fair enough. Tests 1 and 2 are questions of observable fact, though not as straightforward in practice as we might expect, as we shall see. Given the same evidence, reasonable people would hopefully agree on the results of tests 1 and 2. But tests 3 and 4 require the observer to make judgments about President Bush’s internal state of mind. Nobody other than the President can know his mind with certainty, so reasonable people might disagree on the results of tests 3 and 4.
Sean then goes on to apply the four tests to three different cases, in each instance concluding that Bush did not lie. Let us see how I calculate these tests, and whether or not Sean and I inhabit different realities.
You can read the entire post at:
http://www.metathingy.com/2005/11/09/did-bush-lie/
The flow chart is a great help.
The other thing that’s missing is a map of how semi-intelligent, pseudo-reasonable people are get sucked into the Alternative Universe of Moonbat-5.
Sean,
I’m glad that Mr Ziegler is participating, because we seem to have difficulty speaking the same language. In the same way that you “know” that I think Bush is evil, you seem to me to be changing the word “qualified.” It seems to me that you are accusing me of being intentionally obtuse and deceptive, when I honestly am not. I mean George Will, Charles Krauhammer Glenn Reynolds, The Volokh Conspiracy, Jonal Goldberg etc etc made it clear that they too thought she was not in any way the most qualified available choice.( I’ll put up some links over at my site. I don’t know how to do it here.) As you outline such issues as age, sex, the will of the Senate you are redefining “qualification” to mean “confirmability.’ But if that is really your test - she flunked it - as evidenced by her withdrawing her name.If I am looking for a brain surgeon, I’m not too concerned by his or her sex - I would look for other “qualifications.”
I thought that your chart (which I agree is nifty) was sort of useless because you indicated a “definite” knowledge of intentions. If you accept a definition of definite that is based on concepts of reasonable doubt, I’ve no problem with it. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Your last comment to me concerned the term “involvement.” Your examples of someone who is the victim of a mugging being “involved” in the crime, and of the personnel argument, are pretty absurd. I don’t think that the adminstration was trying to be absurd when they used the term. So how about you telling me what you think that they meant by using it?
Still hoping to learn in this discussion, and looking forward to Mr. Ziegler’s and your own comments
bbbustard
Not intentionally obtuse, no. But if you will read what I already wrote, above, you should notice:
* I never redefined “qualification” to mean “confirmability”; I pointed out that “best” encompasses more than mere qualification, and is a necessarily subjective concept.
* Yes, you may read “definitely” as “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
* I think by “involved,” Bush could only have meant “involved in a guilty sort of way.” There is no way on earth he could have meant to encompass “talking about the Plame leak to reporters,” because he was talking about the Plame leak to reporters even as he was making the announcement! When I said “use some common sense,” I forgot to say “please.”
* I find myself largely in agreement with Ziegler about much of what we have been discussing, at least on the level of first principles, the “common ground” I keep trying to share with you. If you understand him but not me, perhaps he can act as my interpreter to you.
And, this is an excellent portrait of the Red-Blue Gap in the country. Good thing most folks are moderate, or assume that politicians of all stripes lie, or just don’t give a rat’s ass, or we’d all be at each others throats and the nation would descend into chaos.
Anywho, I actually just wanted to say that I think you have a wonderful layout here. Really, it’s gorgeous.
Thanks, Aldahlia. And I hope I have not given the impression that I am at anyone’s throat.
For any who are interested, I’ve continued my response here: [LINK]
bbbustard comments on the N.V.
1. I think that you made some great comments here. A part of what I was trying to explore with Sean is Bush’s Christian Faith and his relationship to truth.You have broadened the question beyond just the sixteen words, which
I love your flow chart.
Michelle Malkin has a new twist on the whole “Bush Lied” meme, and Mazurland Blog adds to the mix on that whole question.
Just came across this site… while the post does contain some questionable points, the premise is sound. A lie is intentional.
Most other arguments against this post are spinning the discussion into arguments they think they can win. Forget about winning. Use logic - imagine yourself in the courtroom being accused of lying. Just what is a lie? If Bush is guilty, so are the Clintons, Kennedy, Kerry, Pelosi, Albright, and plenty of other prominent Democrats.
You wrote:
“I happen to know the war started when we were attacked by terrorists”
You’re [obscenity redacted] me, right? You don’t really think that we’re at war with Iraq because Saudi terrorists based in Afghanistan attacked New York, do you?
If you can make sense of that, then you’ll understand that I had pizza for lunch because Neil Armstrong was the first Man on the moon, and because bats are mostly nocturnal.
Howdy, Fishmonger. Sorry, but your comments, being from the moonbat planet, make no sense to me.
First off, you mention in passing that “we’re at war with Iraq,” as if it were something I would take as a given. But you see, on my planet, we’re at war with terrorists, and Iraq is our ally! Really! The Iraqi prime minister came to Washington and spoke to Congress, to thank us and everything. With your planet being the diametric opposite of mine in this most salient event, I should not be surprised if what you had for lunch involved bats somehow.
I reckon your difficulty understanding that we might be fighting an enemy in more than one country might also be chalked up to interplanetary miscommuication. You see, in my planet’s recent history, the USA invaded North Africa to fight Germans, because Japan bombed Hawaii. So it’s not such a difficult concept to grasp over here.