Joe Wilson's problem with progressives
To a lot of people, Joe Wilson deserves credit not just for speaking his mind, but for speaking theirs. "He blurted out what many other Republicans probably were thinking," one commentator put it, while Rush Limbaugh said: "I was shouting, "You're lying," throughout the speech at the television. You're lying! It's a lie! Joe Wilson simply articulated what millions of Americans were saying."
Well, not quite. However many Americans were moved to tax the President with dishonesty as they listend to the speech, it's a safe bet they expressed themselves the way Limbaugh did, in the present progressive — "You're lying." Whereas what Wilson said was "you lie," revisting a use of the simple present that parted ways with ordinary conversational English a couple of centuries ago. "You lie" — it's a sentence you expect to hear finished with "sirrah," and not the sort of thing that anyone says in a moment of spontaneous anger. (–"I really meant to put the money back." –"You lie!")
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