You have to be an idiot to think there is something wrong with plagiarizing. Sidney Gendin, for one, always appreciated students who plagiarized.  What’s the alternative?  He would have had to read student papers, if students did not know he hated original papers presenting their own “thoughts.”  [sic] Let’s not go into what is wrong with that.

In Budapest, where both Julie Andrews and Audrey Hepburn learned the King’s English, (although unmasked as frauds by Theodore Bikel), 5197 individuals and 528 organizations agreed that if you are not planning to use the information to kill anybody, you are free to reprint anything you read without bothering to give credit.  This is too obvious to defend, and I won’t.

The U.S. government, although not signing on, gives every man, woman, child, and descendent of Rancho Dobe’s Storm, free access to reproduce anything and everything that rolls off the press at the Government Printing Office unless the document is explicitly marked “not for reproduction”.   That applies to under 1% of the grab bag.   Of course, try to find someone who wants to reprint the garbage.

If you look at the names of the organizations that have clambered aboard, you will understand why plagiarism not only is not frowned upon but positively welcomed.

In my own case, I can’t imagine how I would have gotten through high school and all the post-high school institutions I encountered along the way to high eminence without  good helpings to the words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, pages and chapters of my betters.     Are you a dirty fink rat capitalist OR WHAT?  Who are you protecting by not stealing and cheating?   Swine, that’s who.   People who don’t steal, cheat, and lie tend to disgust me but I put up with those defects in my friends.  However, I won’t ut up with people giving me dull-witted lectures on the wrongfulness of these practices.   I believe Plato nailed it on the head when he said nobody intentionally does what he thinks is wrong.  Certainly not me.

But I love Budapessssht.   Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t need excuses.   Maybe you do.   Take a peek at the Agreement.