RE: Bill Bennett's alleged racist remarks*
When one looks at the entire context of the remarks made by Bennett it should be obvious to reasonable people that Bennett does not advocate aborting black babies, that most blacks are criminals nor that one might reduce crime rates by aborting all black babies.
So what was racist in Bennett's comments?
Bill Bennett made a minor point that was statistically and logically unassailable, but that touched a third rail — namely, the nexus between race and crime — within the highly charged context of abortion policy. Anyone who knows Bennett knows that he has no history of racist statements nor is is he a racist.
In the course of his Morning in America radio show on Wednesday, Bennett engaged a caller who sought to view the complexities of Social Security solvency through the narrow lens of abortion, an explosive but only tangentially relevant issue. Specifically, the caller contended that if there had not been so many abortions since 1973, there would be millions more living people paying into the Social Security System, and perhaps the system would be solvent.
Bennett, typically well-informed, responded with skepticism over this method of argument by making reference to a book he had read (Freakonomics), which had made an analogous claim: namely, that it was the high abortion rate which was responsible for the overall decline in crime. The former Education secretary took pains to say that he disagreed with this theory, and then developed an argument for why we should resist “extensive extrapolations” from minor premises (like the number of abortions) in forming major conclusions about complex policy questions.
Bennett has pointed out, correctly, that his remarks have been taken out of context. He emphatically qualified his remarks from the standpoint of morality. Then he ended with the entirely valid conclusion that sweeping generalizations are unhelpful in making major policy decisions.
It is accurate to say blacks commit a disproportionate share of violent crimes in the United States. This is not news. It's not even a controversial proposition. Given that fact, it's not a monumentally difficult conceptual leap to surmise that if you aborted every black child in the country from here on out (a hideousness that no one is advocating), the crime rate would drop.
Without getting into the tricky context of Bennett's remarks -- that doing so would be morally reprehensible, etc. -- what more is there to say about it? That it isn't true? No one, as of this writing, has argued that.
I don't think that Bennett chose his words wisely, thus some criticism is warranted.
It was in this context that Bennett remarked:
“I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce
crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose — you
could abort every black baby in this country, and your
crime rate would go down.” Was he suggesting such a
thing? Was he saying that such a thing should even be
considered in the real world? Of course not. His whole
point was that such considerations are patently absurd,
and thus he was quick to add: “That would be an
impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to
do.”
“[T]hese far-out, these far-reaching … extensive
extrapolations are, I think, tricky,” Bennett concluded. It was a point worth making, and it could not have been made effectively without a “far-out” example that highlighted the folly.
But Bennett’s obvious point was that crime reduction is not the be-all and end-all of good policy. You would not approve of something you see as despicable — such as reducing an ethnic population by abortion — simply because it would have the incidental effect of reducing crime.
Bennett’s position, clearly and irrefutably, is that you cannot have tunnel vision, especially on something as emotionally charged as abortion, in addressing multifaceted problems. It is almost always the case that problems, even serious ones, could be minimized or eliminated if you were willing to entertain severe solutions. Such solutions, though, are morally and ethically unacceptable, whatever the validity of their logic. The lesson to be drawn is not that we can hypothetically conceive of the severe solutions but that we resolutely reject them because of our moral core.
This is a bedrock feature of American law and life. We could, for example, dramatically reduce crimes such as robbery and rape by making those capital offenses. We don’t do it because such a draconian solution would be offensive to who we are as a people. But it is no doubt true that if we were willing to check our morality at the door, if the only thing we allowed ourselves to focus on were the reduction of robbery and rape, the death penalty would do the trick.
That he was right in this seems to matter little. Bennett is being fried by the PC police and the ethnic-grievance industry, which have disingenuously ripped his minor point out of its context in a shameful effort to paint him as a racist. He’s about as bigoted as Santa Claus.
Perhaps it's nothing new, but we live in a time where uncomfortable truths -- even challenging questions -- are to be shouted down and, if possible, driven from the public square. Harvard University's Larry Summers discovered this recently. Now Bill Bennett is on the receiving end of this same idiotarian nonsense. America is the worse for it. Thank goodness some liberals were honest enough to defend him. Let's hope others see fit to do the same.
Now, this is racism (see at the links below), but you won't hear that from the people screaming for Bennett's job.
qando.net
americangovernment101.blogspot.com
rightingamerica.blogspot.com
* Shamelessly plagiarized from the following:
techcentralstation.com
nationalreview.com
captainsquartersblog.com |
