« previous post | next post »

Errors in punctuation sometimes result in misinterpretation, but they usually don't arouse the moral outrage that plagiarism does. Some should.

On June 24, 1826 Thomas Jefferson wrote, in a letter to Roger C. Weightman:

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.



Yesterday, in an Independence Day speech at Monticello, President Bush quoted Jefferson's letter as follows:

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be — to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all — the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

A technically correct quotation omitting the words left out by Bush would be:

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains …, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

Bush's replacement of the original parentheses with dashes doesn't really change anything, but his removal of the words "under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves" seriously distorts the meaning of the passage. The original text makes clear that the bonds are those of religion and irrationalism, an important theme for Jefferson, a deist if not closet atheist who was very critical of conventional religion, while Bush's version makes it seem that Jefferson is talking about liberty in general.

This is a relatively minor fraud since Jefferson did not believe that religion was the only source of oppression and had he made the effort Bush could easily have found a passage in which Jefferson was talking about liberty in general, but it is nonetheless a fraud.

Had Bush used ellipses, he would have alerted the reader to the fact that the quotation is incomplete. In this case, where the omission of part of the text distorts its meaning, the very omission is improper, but the failure to at least warn about it compounds the offense.

P.S. I'm sure someone is going to comment that Bush probably didn't write his speech himself. I know that. If he gives the speech, he is responsible for its content, and he is responsible for using staff who know and obey the rules. The buck stops with him.

Permalink