Again, Joe Biden accused of plagiarizing from Canadian Jack Layton's final letter in nomination speech

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At a speech at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, Biden’s final address included the lines, “For love is more powerful than hate. Hope is more powerful than fear. And light is more powerful than dark.”

Social media was quick to point out that the words were eerily similar to ones found in a letter Layton wrote before he died in 2011.
Joe Biden has caught in plagiarism a number of times on other speeches.
“My friends, love is better than anger,” said Layton in his letter. “Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair.”
 
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It’s not plagiarism. It’s just two people saying something somewhat similar, and these are sentiments that have been expressed many times before. St Francis of Assisi and Nelson Mandela both come to mind. (Also Margaret Thatcher, although she was explicitly quoting St Francis.)
 
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Well apparently it is a similar to a speech that he gave in 2008 at DNC so nothing new.

2008: “It’s about whether you can look your children in the eye and say, ‘We’re going to be okay.’”

2020: “It’s about looking your kids in the eye and say, ‘Honey, it’s going to be okay.’”

2008: “That’s how you come to believe, to the very core of your being, that work is more than a paycheck. It’s dignity. It’s respect.”

2020: “He would say, ‘Joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity. It’s about respect.’”

2008: “Barack Obama will transform our economy by making alternative energy a genuine national priority, creating 5 million new jobs and finally freeing us from the grip of foreign oil. That’s the change we need.”

2020: “With pipes that transport clean water to every community. With 5 million new manufacturing and technology jobs so the future is made in America.”

2008: “Barack Obama will put more cops on the streets, put the ‘security’ back in Social Security and never give up until we achieve equal pay for women.”

2020: “I will not let it happen. If I’m your president, we’re going to protect Social Security and Medicare.”

2008: “And this is the time as Americans, together, we get back up.”

2020: “It’s an America we can rebuild together.”

2008: “These are extraordinary times. This is an extraordinary election.”

2020: “All elections are important. But we know in our bones this one is more consequential.”
 
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gam197:
Well apparently it is a similar to a speech that he gave in 2008 at DNC so nothing new.
Like no other politician re-uses lines?
Did you see video? He gave the speech in 2008 at DNC. The 2020 speech is uncanny with the same lines, maybe one line reused would not be noticed but not line after line reused.
 
He did not give the same speech. Biden’s DNC 2020 speech was 25 minutes long. At most, about 1 minute of the speech (4%) included sentences that were broadly similar to sentences that he had uttered before. And why is it so surprising that a politician would be fairly consistent in his views and policies? For example, the idea that work is about more than a paycheck, that it is about dignity and respect. That is an idea that many people (including Pope John Paul II) have expressed over and over. It is hardly surprising that Biden has expressed that idea on at least two occasions. Or pledging to support social security. In 2008, social security was mentioned together with policing and equal pay; in 2020, social security was mentioned together with Medicare. So, really, the only way in which the two speeches were the same was that they both included the words “social security”.

To return to your original post, Nelson Mandela once said, “People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” That is the quotation that came to my mind when I listened to Biden’s speech. The fact that you thought that Biden was plagiarising Jack Layton, while I thought that he was echoing Nelson Mandela, perhaps tells us that they were all simply saying something quite similar. As I said before, the idea of saying that in place of X one will do Y was stated by Francis of Assisi and famously quoted by Margaret Thatcher. It is not a new concept. The rhetorical figure of antithesis goes back at least as far as the ancient Greeks.
 
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I agree that it is too easy to charge plagiarism when time after time people are basically doing the same thing when accepting a nomination for example. I think it is right to point out the almost impossibility of avoiding in some part, in a long speech, things that were expressed previously in some form.
 
At most, about 1 minute of the speech (4%) included sentences that were broadly similar to sentences that he had uttered before. And why is it so surprising that a politician would be fairly consistent in his views and policies? For example, the idea that work is about more than a paycheck, that it is about dignity and respect. That is an idea that many people (including Pope John Paul II) have expressed over and over. It is hardly surprising that Biden has expressed that idea on at least two occasions. Or pledging to support social security. In 2008, social security was mentioned together with policing and equal pay; in 2020, social security was mentioned together with Medicare. So, really, the only way in which the two speeches were the same was that they both included the words “social security”.
He brought up 7 or 8 things he also said in his 2008 DNC speech and repeated them almost word for word. It does not surprise me that he said the same things. He has been doing speeches for 47 years so saying the same things would seem reasonable.
That is the quotation that came to my mind when I listened to Biden’s speech. The fact that you thought that Biden was plagiarising Jack Layton, while I thought that he was echoing Nelson Mandela, perhaps tells us that they were all simply saying something quite similar.
That could be.
 
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The 2020 speech is uncanny with the same lines, maybe one line reused would not be noticed but not line after line reused.
The lines you quoted aren’t even close to identical, they’re just similar ideas. Making up a tiny percentage of a speech.
We all realize how much you . . . oppose . . . Biden, but this is at least as much of a stretch as pushing unsupported allegations about his wife.
 
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gam197:
The 2020 speech is uncanny with the same lines, maybe one line reused would not be noticed but not line after line reused.
The lines you quoted aren’t even close to identical, they’re just similar ideas. Making up a tiny percentage of a speech.
The 7 or 8 sentences he repeated were very similar and why does it surprise you. He has done so many speeches. This one was from the DNC convention in 2008. Could be he used it for a reference.
 
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The 7 or 8 sentences he repeated were very similar and why does it surprise you. He has done so many speeches. This one was from the DNC convention in 2008. Could be he used it for a reference.
It doesn’t surprise me a bit. You’re the one making accusations about his speech.
 
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gam197:
The 7 or 8 sentences he repeated were very similar and why does it surprise you. He has done so many speeches. This one was from the DNC convention in 2008. Could be he used it for a reference.
It doesn’t surprise me a bit. You’re the one making accusations about his speech.
I mentioned it because the media has been gushing over the wonderful acceptance speech that Joe Biden made and they have to know this is a repeat in many ways of the 2008 DNC speech but just keeping talking about his great speech. Headlines -

NYTimes - With The Speech Of His Life, Joe Becomes The Man For This Moment

Time.com - The Speech Joe Biden Waited His Whole Life To Give

Vogue - DNC 2020 - The Eight Key moments in Joe’s Speech

Vox - DNC 2020 - Fox News Thinks Joe Biden’s Speech Was A Home Run
 
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Wouldn’t surprise me if it was plagiarized. Politicians don’t have a high degree of ethical conduct.
 
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If the regular media would report on the fact that his speech had elements from his 2008 speech but the media is dishonest so others point out errors and such.
 
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Imo hate is not the same as anger. Optimism and despair may seem like light and darkness but he specifically chose light and darkness to be the theme for his speech.

What next, criticize the use of iambic pentameter?
 
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I mentioned it because the media has been gushing over the wonderful acceptance speech that Joe Biden made and they have to know this is a repeat in many ways of the 2008 DNC speech but just keeping talking about his great speech
Having a few repeated themes hardly disqualifies a speech from being great. Also doesn’t justify accusations of plagiarism.
I do hope you’re not going to claim that Trump doesn’t repeat themes and ideas in his speeches.
 
If the media are not reporting this, it is because it is completely unimportant to anyone but you. It is in the nature of a politician to keep on repeating the same policy objectives until they are accomplished. It is only human nature to use the same figures of speech from time to time.

Tony Blair was known for saying, “Education, education, education”, “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, “We stand shoulder to shoulder”, etc. He wasn’t plagiarising, these were just things he said over and over. He also said, “A new dawn has broken, has it not?” As far as I am aware, he only said that once. It would be strange if he had kept saying it, because it was a spontaneous thing he said on a unique occasion.

Returning to Biden, basically, he has a habit of saying, “Instead of a bad thing, a good thing”, and he often returns to themes like employment being a good thing, social security being a good thing, healthcare being a good thing.

No doubt if you analysed the speeches of Martin Luther King you would find that on more than one occasion he probably said something about segregation being bad, black people having the right to vote, and so on, and he probably quoted the Bible over and over.
 
If the media are not reporting this, it is because it is completely unimportant to anyone but you. It is in the nature of a politician to keep on repeating the same policy objectives until they are accomplished. It is only human nature to use the same figures of speech from time to time.
It is important to many people when a 78-year-old politician repeats the same speech he said 12 years ago and no one reports on it. Then the main media outlets proclaim it as the speech of a lifetime as if he did not say it 12 years ago.

NYTimes - With The Speech Of His Life, Joe Becomes The Man For This Moment

Time.com - The Speech Joe Biden Waited His Whole Life To Give
Tony Blair was known for saying, “Education, education, education”, “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, “We stand shoulder to shoulder”, etc. He wasn’t plagiarising, these were just things he said over and over. He also said, “A new dawn has broken, has it not?” As far as I am aware, he only said that once. It would be strange if he had kept saying it, because it was a spontaneous thing he said on a unique occasion.
Plagiarising involves copying someone else’s words. If Tony Blair said “Education, education education” and they were his words, he could repeat as much as he liked.

Again it is the same speech …

 
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Plagiarising involves copying someone else’s words. If Tony Blair said “Education, education education” and they were his words, he could repeat as much as he liked.
Biden was repeating his own words, right? So that’s not plagiarism. Or are you talking about when he allegedly repeated the words of a Canadian politician? That wasn’t plagiarism either, because he didn’t actually repeat his exact words. He just expressed a similar sentiment which has, as you have been told repeatedly, been expressed in more or less the same form of words over and over for hundreds of years, based on a figure of Greek rhetoric dating back almost 2,400 years.
It is important to many people when a 78-year-old politician repeats the same speech he said 12 years ago and no one reports on it. Then the main media outlets proclaim it as the speech of a lifetime as if he did not say it 12 years ago.
It was the speech of a lifetime. It was one of the finest political speeches I have ever heard.

He did not repeat the same speech that he made 12 years ago. About 1 minute out of a 25-minute speech contained broadly similar themes to those he had expressed 12 years previously. He has this theme that a job is about more than a paycheck; it’s about dignity and respect. That is true. It is hardly surprising that somebody who has been in public office for a total of 46 years would mention the importance of people being in employment on more than one occasion. In fact, it would be astonishing if somebody in public office for 46 years only mentioned employment once in his whole lifetime!

His age is irrelevant.

. . . . I mean, I get that people on this forum apparently don’t like the guy because of his position on abortion (note that Trump is not anti-abortion in all cases anyway), but you seem to find something negative to say about Biden every day!
 
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