A plagiarism expert has determined that Vice President Kamala Harris plagiarized 12 passages in a little-known book she produced in 2009. While some dismiss plagiarism as a small offense often committed by accident, the Harris-Walz campaign’s decision to deny and excuse her action should concern Christians deeply.

The allegations were brought to light by Christopher Rufo, who has championed intellectual integrity as a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. “Kamala Harris plagiarized at least a dozen sections of her criminal-justice book, Smart on Crime, according to a new investigation. The current vice president even lifted material from Wikipedia. We have the receipts,” said Rufo in a post on the social media platform X.

The book in is question “Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer,” which Harris wrote in 2009 as she tried to raise her profile to run for her first statewide office as attorney general of California. A cursory overview of the book shows she lifted whole passages verbatim from NBC News, a press release from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and perhaps the world’s least reliable source of plagiarism, Wikipedia.

Rather than apologize — or, to use the biblical term, repent — the Harris campaign has seemingly decided to deny any wrongdoing. “This is a book that’s been out for 15 years, and the vice president clearly cited sources and statistics in footnotes and endnotes throughout,” said Harris-Waltz campaign spokesman James Singer.

That is clearly inaccurate. Even The New York Times acknowledged Kamala Harris committed plagiarism, comparing side-by-side passages in a story titled “Conservative Activist Seizes on Passages from Harris Book.” Yet the story exonerates her “the most serious form of plagiarism,” claiming she did not steal ideas, just words and figures while implying that Rufo harbors racist motives.

Thus far, the vice president appears to have suffered little for the controversy. The plagiarism scandal may have been the determining criteria that convinced Joe Biden to choose her as his running mate. (Just kidding: It was her raceandsex.) But her scandal reminds readers of Biden’s own: In 1988, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden committed serial plagiarism, stealing a moving speech from Robert F. Kennedy (Sr.) and the autobiography of U.K. Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. Biden has also been accused of plagiarizing multiple pages in a submission published in Syracuse Law School’s journal and a 2000 article for Harvard Journal on Legislation.

To this day, Biden’s ever-shrinking circle of loyalists also try to defend the indefensible. At the time, The New York Times tried to excuse a Democratic presidential hopeful’s actions, running E.J. Dionne’s headline in 1987, “Biden Admits Plagiarism in School But Says It Was Not ‘Malevolent.’” In her recent memoir “Growing Up Biden,” Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, waved off her brother’s plagiarism, writing that she should never have had “[t]o see my brother maligned on the one thing that had always been his calling card — his integrity” (proving that theft is not the family’s only sin).

Aside from refusing to acknowledge wrongdoing, the act of plagiarism itself should concern Christian believers for several reasons. True, people can accidentally copy material and forget to change it appropriately, and some passages — especially statistics — are difficult to present in different language. With that caveat in mind, let’s examine the reasons people of faith should care about plagiarism.

Plagiarism is a form of theft. It robs original thinkers of their insight, eloquence, and creativity. It demands a higher intellectual status than the person’s accomplishments merit. It redistributes respect and reputation from those who earned it to those who did not or, possibly, cannot. “In a way, fraud in business is no different from infidelity in marriage or plagiarism in scholarly work,” wrote Miroslav Volf of Yale Divinity School. The same operative lust for undeserved privilege triggers all three actions.

Continual plagiarism is a sign of intellectual vapidity. Then-New York Governor Mario Cuomo, who vacillated about multiple Democratic presidential races before opting against all of them, once said Biden had a “dumb blonde” problem. Harris’s speeches serve up a never-ending word salad buffet about “the passage of time” and imagining life “unburdened by what has been.” Neither has ever developed a reputation for concrete policy proposals or a firm grasp of facts and figures.

Plagiarism almost invariably reveals the passion of laziness. That seemingly got confirmed by those who work with Vice President Harris.“It’s clear that you’re not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work,” revealed one former staffer. Lest someone blame the leak on one disgruntled former employee, The Washington Post reported, “Staffers who worked for Harris before she was vice president said one consistent problem was that Harris would refuse to wade into briefing materials prepared by staff members, then berate employees when she appeared unprepared.” A president who refuses to think deeply, or who outsources her thinking to subordinates, will imperil our country.

For Christians, a listless intellect has a deeper meaning. The Book of Proverbs states, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7). When fools rule, dangerous consequences follow. “A companion of fools shall be destroyed,” Proverbs goes on to say (13:20).

Kamala Harris is asking 331 million Americans to become her companions and subjects. They should eschew intellectual laziness and think long and hard about whether they should agree.