Is McCain Now Copying Solzhenitsyn?

[Benny B]

 
Last week, a speech by Sen. John McCain had phrases that were likely lifted directly from Wikipedia.

Now it seems McCain may have lifted another story last night at megachurch pastor Rick Warren's Faith Forum. According to a very persuasive Daily Kos diary, the anecdote McCain told about a North Vietnamese prison guard making a cross in the dirt as a sign of solidarity -- or as he said, "just two Christians worshiping together" -- is very similar to a story about Alexander Solzhenitsyn and his times in the Soviet Gulags.

"As Solzhenitsyn stared at the Cross drawn in the dirt his entire perspective changed. He knew he was only one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet he knew there was something greater than the evil he saw in the prison camp, something greater than the Soviet Union.  He knew that hope for all people was represented by that simple Cross. Through the power of the Cross, anything was possible."

Steven Waldman notes that McCain's recounting of this story has changed over the years and "has gradually morphed from being about the humanity of the guard to being about the Christian faith of the guard and John McCain."

Andrew Sullivan says that McCain's early accounts of his years as a POW do not even include this story.

[gcb]

you have to copy when you can't remember anything

[240 is Back]

mccain is going to be hilarious in the NBC debates.

I'm talking downright comical.

[youandme]

The Gulag Archipelago, have you even read it? It's in no way similar to anything McCain said, except his fight against a socialist system.

Interesting that a liberal would find such similarities in a McCain speech in a book about a concentratio camp centered around work ethic, while Obama's vision is to decrease worth ethic in place of a welfare state.