Plagiarism?



FOR Jarrett writes:

Robert Higgs has decided to copy your December opinion without referencing you. See http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1452. Does it annoy you when others copy your material?

There's nothing more annoying than being plagiarized. A few weeks after I sent Michael Kinsley a bunch of cartoons in his capacity as a magazine editor, he wrote a column that appeared to lift the rather esoteric concept of my cartoon hook, line and sinker. Of course, I'm not 100% certain. It may have just been a coincidence, though I still doubt it.

There are some remarkable similarities between my column comparing Bush to FDR and the above-referenced piece by Robert Higgs. But is it plagiarism?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Some ideas occur to different people simply because they're true or make sense at the time. This could be one of those times. Or Higgs thought that no one in the UK reads my Yankee Dog writing.

Seriously: I don't know. And when I don't know something, I assume the best. Unlike, say, the Bush Administration.