Not the First Time He’s Done This… Hopefully It Will Be His Last
New York Post By Mary Kay Linge
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden reprised his penchant for borrowing lines from other people’s work this week — apparently relying a bit too heavily on the words of a deceased Canuck party leader during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, reports said.
Biden concluded his Thursday night speech by saying: “For love is more powerful than hate. Hope is more powerful than fear. Light is more powerful than dark.”
But Canadian media quickly noted that the former veep’s words were uncannily similar to those of Jack Layton, the leader of Canada’s left-wing New Democratic Party, who issued a poignant open letter to his fellow citizens as he lay dying of cancer nine years ago Saturday, on Aug. 22, 2011.
“My friends,” Layton wrote, “Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair.”
“A number of Canadians are struck by the similar parting words of Biden’s speech to the final words of Jack Layton’s farewell letter before his death,” CBC’s Washington correspondent Alexander Panetta tweeted at the time.
Layton’s message, meanwhile, had likewise used similar language attributed to former Canadian Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier, the National Post reported.
“Let me tell you that for the solution of these problems you have a safe guide, an unfailing light if you remember that faith is better than doubt and love is better than hate,” Laurier said in 1916.
The differences between Biden’s language and Layton — and Laurier for that matter — were apparently subtle enough to escape the $4,200 anti-plagiarism software program that the Democratic nominee’s campaign reportedly installed last year.
