Giving the Lie

I skipped the umpteenth rendition of the Obama-Health-Care speech -- either the twenty-eighth such speech, or the 121st, depending on how you count -- so apparently I missed something interesting.

In an angry and very audible outburst, Representative Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, interrupted President Obama’s speech Wednesday night with a shout of “You lie!”

His eruption — in response to Mr. Obama’s statement that Democratic health proposals would not cover illegal immigrants — stunned members of both parties in the House chamber.

This phrasing is not a "breach of protocol," as the NYT would have it, but part of another protocol. Kenneth S. Greenberg, scholar of dueling (and baseball, oddly enough; he had some interesting things to say on the intersection of those two things in the post-war American South), noted:

Only certain kinds of insulting language and behavior led to duels. The central insult that could turn a disagreement into a duel involved a direct or indirect attack on someone's word -- the accusation that a man was a liar. To "give someone the lie," as it was called, had always been of great consequence among men of honor. As one early-seventeenth-century English writer noted, "It is reputed so great a shame to be accounted a lyer, that any other injury is canceled by giving the lie, and he that receiveth it standeth so charged in his honor and reputation, that he cannot disburden himself of that imputation, but by the striking of him that hath given it, or by chalenging him to the combat."

TigerHawk is thus right to wonder if restoring the duel would reinforce civility, because it is the duel that is involved here. It's also of note that a congressman from South Carolina was the actor, since the only other time that dueling forms were brought into Congress I know of was also by the South Carolina faction. I mean, of course, the caning of Charles Sumner, which was not a duel precisely because the South Carolina faction wanted to send the message that he was no gentleman (and therefore unfit for a duel, but only for a beating).

In any event, there is actually one other way to resolve the issue short of combat, and it has occurred. The apology from the gentleman from South Carolina resolves the matters of honor at issue in the dispute, as long as the President is willing to let the matter pass. As Alexander Dumas put it, if a gentleman has apologized, he has done all he can do. He cannot grovel, after all, and remain a free and equal man. The apology is the ultimate offer to resolve things peacefully.

So the matter is resolved; but it was an interesting display. The last time we saw such a thing in Congress was 1856. The Civil War was still years away, but the tensions were building to the point that a split was coming.

UPDATE: Here's the video.



Actually, the gentleman from South Carolina was responding to provocation. The President had just finished accusing "prominent politicians" who spoke about the panels President Obama has actually endorsed of spreading "a lie."

Now, most of us reading this probably assume that he meant Mrs. Palin -- although, as she is retired, she is no longer a "prominent politician." It's highly likely that the Congressman from South Carolina, and many others in the room, took that remark as being pointed at them. Thus, the President was accusing them to their face of being liars.

Under those circumstances, Rep. Wilson's remark was no more than to give the President back what he had so freely offered others. It was entirely proper; and his apology, then, highly generous.