Friday, July 20, 2018

Walberg's Plagiarism from a House Floor Speech

Significant portions of a House floor speech that Congressperson Tim Walberg delivered on April 10, 2013 were plagiarized.

I have identified four portions of the speech that Walberg lifted from two sources:
- A book by Patrick J. Buchanan that was published in 2011.
- And a book called "The American Spirit" that was published in 2012.

1) Plagiarized Portion from the Patrick Buchanan book: 

2) Plagiarized Portion from the Patrick Buchanan book:

Walberg did properly attribute that excerpt to Alexander Solzhenitsyn. However, there were three variations from Solzhenitsyn's speech that indicate that Walberg was plagiarizing from Buchanan.
1) Walberg started his excerpt midway through a sentence just as Buchanan had done.
2) Walberg switched a word "were" to "are" just as Buchanan had done.
3) Walberg removed a sentence midway through the excerpt just as Buchanan had done.
Lastly, the Solzhenitsyn excerpt appeared two pages after the other segment in Buchanan's book that Walberg plagiarized.

3) Plagiarized Portion from "The American Spirit" book:

This excerpt also contains several variation indicators that it was this book that Walberg plagiarized from. The added offense is how it shows up in the Official Congressional Record with quotes as if Walberg was quoting one of the U.S. Founders. It was not presented as a quote like that in the earlier publications. So now Walberg's plagiarism is distorting the Historical record.

4) Not Technically Plagiarism, but From the Same Source:

Walberg properly attributed this quote to Irving Kristol. So this segment was not plagiarized. It comes from the same page of the book as the other quote that Walberg plagiarized though. I present it here because it helps substantiate the fact that Walberg plagiarized that other section of the book.

This is just one analysis of just one of Walberg's speeches. I have not checked all of his speeches. I haven't even checked all of this one speech. So it makes me wonder how common of an occurrence is it for Walberg to plagiarize things like this?

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