Let’s focus here on the real issues regarding Paul’s statement in question, which are neither plagiarism nor sloth, but idiocy and hypocrisy. I mean, an anti-choice Libertarian?! I suppose next he’ll be telling us that legalized sodomy is a slippery (with sufficient lube) slope to single-payer health care!
I’m getting confused - did this really happen, or is it a bit of pre-Hallowe’en hyperbole? 
There’s no need to choose! 
I’d be hesitant to vote for a candidate who inhales – Wouldn’t you? They bashed on Clinton for that, remember?
Where do people get the idea that either of the Pauls is in any way a libertarian? Ron Paul is a bog-standard hard-right conservative, except that he likes pot. Rand is the same, except without the pot.
Wait, OK, I guess Ron also has the bit about wanting a government takeover of the precious metals industry. But that’s the opposite of libertarian.
It was also a wandering, mind-numbingly stupid speech. If my staff gave me that to read, I’d be out looking for better writers. Pretty sure I could find some in any middle school.
When Rand was first making the rounds of the Tea Party groups in Kentucky he liked to start his speeches by quoting Rush lyrics.
So I think it’s best to imagine his speeches as coming from that one guy you used to smoke pot with in college.
Who thought it’d be funny to get really baked and kind of kidnap a girl.
Ron Paul, typical? The same dude who got booed at conventions for arguing for anti-war isolationism, understanding terrorist motives, and supporting civil liberties? Plus he’s a goldbug, which is always fun.
/It’s not happening.jpg
Still, it’s hard to hate the guy when he has brought so much joy into Rachel Maddow’s life. I love to watch her reveling in this stuff.
Oh, those sentences have been written plenty of times since before 2008.
Ron did get the Libertarian Party nomination for President in 1988, and Lew Rockwell , who is definitely a libertarian, was his chief of staff when he was in Congress.
It’s not just Wikipedia. About three pages of Government Bullies were copied from a 10-year-old Heritage Foundation report.
I don’t really know that this is meaningful at all. Plagiarism in itself is a vaguely defined, mostly pointless term outside of academics and journalism where there are more definite rules about it. Paul was obviously talking about a movie, and I actually did a search on the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article and you see extremely similar content all over the internet, on imdb, on Amazon.com describing the DVD etc. The passage from Wikipedia in itself might very well be cribbed from somewhere else or even just a slight modification of the summary of the movie found on the back of the DVD/VHS tape of the film.
I doubt very many people would be shocked to find out Paul’s speechwriters borrowed the summary description of a film from some popular source.
I think that Biden’s plagiarism was also more notable because there had already been a mini-scandal when it came out that Biden had plagiarized portions of a law review article he wrote while in law school–in a context where such plagiarism actually has a definite meaning and violates established rules. By and large the only people who care about “failure to attribute” are academics and journalists and people who already disliked the person involved. Martin Luther King heavily plagiarized for example, and that’s done little to harm his reputation.
Paul has too many political problems with his positions on the issues to win the GOP primary, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t even run. But plagiarism scandals certainly will have nothing to do with that.
In the run up to the 1980 election, Congressman Paul spoke at my high school as it was in his district. After the assembly he stayed and talked to a small group of us. At the time the Libertarians were getting a good deal of press and one of us asked him what he thought of the party. I recall him saying they certainly had a lot of interesting ideas. He also recommended we check out the book “A New Beginning” by Ed Clark, the Libertarian nominee for President at the time. I’ve basically considered him libertarian in philosophy since then. The only reason he ever ran as a Republican was because it was the only way to get elected and I honestly think he believed he could affect change from within rather than being on the fringe.
And of course, this ^. Unless you don’t consider the Libertarian Party to be libertarian that is.
Randy is a bit of a different story because I see him as more of an opportunist, but most of his positions are definitely rooted in libertarian philosophy.
I don’t think it’s very important at all, but it’s lazy as shit- and yes, it’s reasonable to expect better. “Don’t take credit for other people’s work” isn’t that complicated. The stuff in Paul’s book was at least vaguely cited, but real attribution or footnotes are not too much to ask for. We’re supposed to believe this is a very intelligent man.
That’s because plagiarism is rampant online. There are entire sites that do nothing except mirror the content of Wikipedia, for example. It’s all the more reason to be careful with online sourcing.
Rand Paul’s not a plagiarist.
And now he will challenge all his ‘haters’ to a duel! If only he could!
“And like I say, if, you know, if dueling were legal in Kentucky, if they keep it up, you know, it would be a duel challenge. But I can’t do that, because I can’t hold office in Kentucky then.” Rand Paul Responds To Plagiarism Accusations: 'If Dueling Were Legal In Kentucky..' | HuffPost Latest News
Really? That’s how you answer charges of plagiarism? First by making weird, convoluted claims that lifting words from a Wikipedia article about a movie means you weren’t claiming to be the screenwriter of said movie, and then by duel? And the only thing that prevents you from dueling is the office you hold?
He is one strange dude.
Well, that’s a little more respectable.