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Go Home She Cannot Tell A Lie

JONATHAN CHAIT SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

She Cannot Tell A Lie

BY JAMES DOWNIE

[Guest post by James Downie]

Since winning a Senate nomination in Delaware, Christine O'Donnell has been assaulted by one embarassing old TV clip after another, from her anti-masturbation campaign to one where she admits to dabbling in witchcraft as a teenager. (When asked on Saturday about the latter, she responded, “How many of you did not hang out with questionable folks in high school?”) The following clip, though, from an August 1998 episode of "Politically Incorrect" is the scariest. Here, O'Donnell declares that there is never an acceptable reason to lie; when comedian Eddie Izzard asks "would you lie to Hitler" if you were protecting Jews in your house, O'Donnell replies, "God would provide a way to do the right thing righteously."

How much of a fanatic do you have to be to actually hold that position? And what would O'Donnell say to heroes like Raoul Wallenberg, who often had to lie to provide Jews with safe passage out of Germany? One wonders if, even now, the Tea Party really knows who they've nominated.

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I was waiting for the moment when anti-semitism would emerge from a Tea Party favorite. The Tea Party Republicans are on the fanatic side of the ledger on many issues. The question for Liberals is, "Should Liberals be fanatic in their opposition to fanatics?"

- LawrenceGulotta

September 20, 2010 at 2:03pm

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Chotiner: "what if you were hiding Anne Frank and the SS was at your door, asking if you were sheltering any Jews? Still wrong, according to O'Donnell. " Downie: "O'Donnell declares that there is never an acceptable reason to lie; when comedian Eddie Izzard asks 'would you lie to Hitler' if you were protecting Jews in your house, O'Donnell replies, 'God would provide a way to do the right thing righteously.'" Do these two passages refer to the same O'Donnell comment? If they do, while I am mindful of the commandment to give no succor to O'Donnell, the statement that "God would provide a way to do the right thing righteously.'" isn't quite the same as Chotiner's paraphrase, "Still wrong." In fact, I thought she was saying that it would be righteous to lie, which is otherwise wrong, if the lie was told in order to "do the right thing."

- LBarbash

September 20, 2010 at 3:19pm

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LBarbash: Why do I get the feeling you are not serious?

- LawrenceGulotta

September 20, 2010 at 3:27pm

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You have to be fanatic on the order of Immanuel Kant. This is the categorical imperative.

- liberal reformer

September 20, 2010 at 4:19pm

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Liberal Reformer: Adolf Eichmann defended myself using Kant's "Categorical Imperative." Hanna Arendt in "Eichmann In Jersusalem" quotes Eichman extensively on his Kantian "Categorical Imperative." Liberal Reformer, why don't you try to expain your citation with greater clarity.

- LawrenceGulotta

September 20, 2010 at 4:29pm

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Others have captured some of the urtext of her comment but I would submit not all of it. Certain she is parroting Kant. What's more important is the trap she think Maher is trying to set (I'm certain he is oblivious). In the conservative Catholic circles she frequents, the Jesuits are as big a bogeyman as there are. And Jesuitical ethical reasoning on this issue (I'm oversimplifying), famously used the example of whether it was OK to lie to the axe murderer as to the location of the hidden children, to convey that the categorical imperative failed to account for examples in which they contended that the questioner was not entitled to the truth (I know, Kant thought every questioner always was). That Jesuitical example was later adapted to Nazi questioners. But those on the Catholic Right see it as the forefront of relativism, a license to lie. She thinks that's where Maher is going - trying to trap her into Jesuitical reasoning (the horror). The circles he travels in equate the categorical imperative to a Priest's vow to never break the seal of the confessional, because they are in the business of saving souls, not lives. That's where she was coming from. She's recogizable type if you are familiar with them

- gator27

September 20, 2010 at 8:47pm

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