Calling the President a liar is explicitly against the rules of the House. Wilson may have apologized to the President but by shouting out as he did, during a session of the House, he violated established protocols and should also apologize to his colleagues.
The House of Commons has often raucous discussions but it also has a rule against calling a member a liar. Andrew Sullivan explains the reason for why both the US and British legislative branches have such an edict:
I see a lot of commentary that compares Joe Wilson’s “You Lie!” outburst with the ruckus that often happens in the House of Commons. But one thing you are not allowed to shout in the Commons is that another speaker is a liar. A lot of circumlocutions evolved to bypass this – “terminological inexactitude” is my favorite (Churchill, of course) – but the ban is for a reason. Once the opposition starts yelling “You lie!” they have essentially abandoned the deliberative process, by questioning the good faith of a speaker. Without an assumption of good faith or a factual rebuttal, just calling someone a liar abolishes the integrity of the debating process. It ends a conversation. And parliament is about conversation.
So, every single person who puts a “You Lie!” bumper sticker on their car is demonstrating that they no longer believe in democracy, in the deliberative process that creates out laws. (You can find the link via Google but I refuse to link to it.)
They want to just end the conversations. Like a bunch of schoolchildren. We saw this behavior in some of the town halls. The only thing they can bring to the debate are personal attacks.
Perhaps when they all have put on their new bumper stickers, it will become much easier to determine who are the adults in the debate and who are the grumpy teenagers, or even younger.
Then America can know who will be the ones that can actually move us towards a future where we solve our problems rather than hurl epithets
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