The dictionary defines plagiarism as “taking someone’s words or ideas as if they were your own.” Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery. But unacknowledged, lifting a someone’s ideas without attribution is disgusting—it tells me all I need to know about a character.
I once submitted a version of “How Things Would Work in a Copyright-Free Universe” to the editor of a well-known American libertarian magazine. It had been published previously in the Canadian Financial Post. The editors there had been excited about it and were not disappointed—the piece generated a good deal of mail.
The editor of the libertarian magazine, however, replied that the thing was not comprehensive enough for his publication. A week or two later, the exact ideas appeared in his column, including a reference to one or two utterly obscure sources used in my article.
There have been other such unpleasant instances.
More recently, on March 3, 2006 in “The People Vs. Dubya & Dubai,” I observed that libertarians had joined neoconservatives to tarnish security conscious Americans as anti-Arab racists and Islamophobes for their rejection of the Dubai transaction.
On March 11, I reiterated that observation on Barely a Blog, writing that neoconservatives and their left-libertarian allies in this affair truly showed their skunk appeal, and that the Dubai debacle has served as the all-time low-life litmus test because of this lot’s self-righteous haste to substitute ad hominem arguments for substantive debate.
In the March-27 issue of a certain magazine, a member of the small and well-acquainted libertarian community of writers used the rather obscure observation vis-a-vis the neoconservative/libertarian momentary alignment to segue into a discussion of the Dubai debacle. Missing from the analysis were five words: “As Ilana Mercer has observed.”
At the time of writing, if you Googled Ann Coulter and H. L. Mencken together my name came up first. That’s how idiosyncratic my June-8 commentary on this pairing was. In his latest July-17 magazine article, the aforementioned libertarian uses the analogy (in a totally inappropriate context, mind you). Missing again are these simple words: “As Ilana Mercer has observed.”
Of course, this is not about an ignorance of the rules and etiquette of attribution, but about an unfamiliarity with morals. My
About the natural law, Sir William Blackstone noted that it “should include such precepts as that human beings should live honestly, hurt nobody, and render everyone their due” (in Conway, 2004). Clearly an instinct alien to some.
Update: a good friend and a professional writer offers that such practices are abominable, but points out that a well-known magazine gambit is to reject a query but take its ideas. Call me naive, but I once expected more from libertarians. No longer. Said writer has also directed me to Copyscape, another helpful online resource.