Why can’t we just ban politicians from lying? - Index on Censorship
An outright ban on intentional deception would be unenforceable, lead to self-censorship and do nothing to tackle the disinformation plaguing social media
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My only problem with anything like this is who decides what counts and "the truth"?
Because if we grab 10 people from Louisiana they will tell you that God is real and that is the truth.
You grab 10 people from California you're probably gonna have a harder time getting them to agree on what the "truth" is on gods existence.
100%
The issue is never the spirit of the law, it’s the application. We do NOT want governments to be deciding which “facts” are government-approved.
For one thing, factual information exists in multitudes. What kind of facts do we want recognized as legally true? “A person can’t pull their bottom lip over their head and swallow themselves” is just as true as “the sky is blue.” How many facts do we want recognized as legally true? Do we pick them one by one, or do we want to give rubber-stamp approval to groups of facts, like say everything you’d find in a typical academic text book? What do we do if we find out one of those facts was wrong or inaccurate? How easily can we alter a legally recognized fact if we discover it to be false or erroneous? If we make it easy, what’s to stop someone from using that to changing the definition to suit their agenda? What happens when facts evolve? Can we differentiate between a politician that hadn’t received all the information and one that chose to ignore it? If discoveries come about that bring a previously declared fact into question, are they illegal for politicians to discuss them? If we “just” ban politicians from making false statements, what’s to stop politicians from simply altering their lingo to never make claims in their statements? Wouldn’t then things be just like before, where they lie but do so with clever wording that omits any technical wrong-doing on their part? What do we do when there’s two conflicting sources on what’s true and what isn’t? Do we vote on it? Can truth be democratically sourced?
I’m not saying we should let politicians lie. I’m just saying, if we build an eject button that springs politicians out of their seats and into a pit of boiling magma, you’re just removing more control from the people by focusing it to one person: the button pusher.
Lifetime federal prison for being willfully misleading.