BuzzFeed is at it again. After calling attention to passages in Senator Rand Paul’s 2013 book, Government Bullies, that were lifted verbatim from a Heritage Foundation Study, the website is now honing in on Dr. Ben Carson’s 2012 book, America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great.
Some of the segments of the book that BuzzFeed highlights all draw from an un-cited source: socialismsucks.net, a website that started in 2002 but is now down. Researching a cached page on Archive.org on the history of socialism reveals the multi-paragraph plagiarism. It includes this passage below, from Carson’s book:
Anytime you give to government the responsibility and authority to provide government-made jobs, old-age financial security, “free” health care, and “free” education and indoctrination of children, it will control the lives of the people who live under its jurisdiction, and individual liberty and freedom of choice are sacrificed.
Looks like Carson could’ve used a little more “indoctrination” in the art of not plagiarizing.
It doesn’t end there, though; BuzzFeed also found passages from The Five Thousand Year Leapby W. Cleon Skousen. If that name sounds familiar to you, that’s because Skousen’s books have made waves before (relevant part bolded):
The book, for the record, tells the “story of slavery” by quoting “historian” Fred Albert Shannon at length; on particular quotation talks of white boys who envy the freedom of black slave children, and described newly sold slaves as “a cheerful lot.” It also said that abolitionists spread false rumors about the mistreatment of black slaves, and states that “slave owners were the worst victims of the system.”
Arizona schools were pushing his book, The Five Thousand Year Leap, in 2014. Skousen was a byproduct of the absolute worst of the 1950s, and good god if that’s not saying something. This odious human being was an ardent supporter for the John Birch Society, a historical revisionist, a New World Order conspiracy theorist, and an end-times crackpot. This also isn’t the first time Carson has had a run in with Skousen’s books, either; he was shilling for The Naked Communist on Fox back in July.
Sealey Yates, a spokes person for Carson, told BuzzFeed that “If it is determined that additional citations or attribution are required, the appropriate revisions will be made in subsequent printings.”
Judging by the BuzzFeed article, they’re going to need a lot more attributions.
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