I started reading The Art of War this afternoon and wasn’t looking for it but — blamo — there it was. The highlighted text on the left is page 66 of Sun Tzu: The Art of War, Translated and with an Introduction by Samuel B. Griffith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963); and the highlighted text on the right is from page 196 of Rules for Reformers (Douglas Wilson, Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2014). I’m sure there is more but I refuse to buy a Canon Press book. Regardless, he just can’t stop himself from taking other people’s property. We have several other examples from various books tucked away in the cupboard for a rainy day. But since Sun Tzu is on the front burner, here’s a quickie:

Douglas Wilson has a habit of pinching a sentence here and a sentence there. For example, he ripped a line from Gary North here and he cribbed a translation from the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery there (scroll to the bottom image). And we can eliminate the possibility that Mr. Wilson accidentally channeled Sun Tzu. On page 83 of Rules for Reformers he quotes page 66 of The Art of War — the same page he filched from above. So this is part of a larger pattern.