Posted on 09/30/2005 4:47:39 AM PDT by InvisibleChurch
Friday, Sept. 30, 2005 12:07 a.m. EDT Bill Bennett Responds to Critics over Black Abortion
Former Reagan administration education secretary Bill Bennett blasted his critics Thursday night, including Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, of whom Bennett said: ""I'll not take instruction from Teddy Kennedy. A young woman likely drowned because of his negligence."
Bennett is on the hot seat for remarks uttered Wednesday during his radio show, "Morning in America," where he was arguing against some of the more extreme justifications for abortion, calling them "ridiculous and morally reprehensible."
Offering an example, Bennett said:
"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.”
By Thursday afternoon, prominent Democrats had seized upon the comment.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who said last year that the Supreme Court's lone black member was "an embarrassment to the court," is demanding that Bennett "issue an immediate apology not only to African Americans but to the nation.”
Left wing Democrat Ted Kennedy, whose brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, ordered the illegal wiretapping of Martin Luther King, called Bennett a "racist."
And Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, who suggested last year that most blacks hold menial jobs, called Bennett's comments "hateful" and "inflammatory" - and called on him to apologize.
Responding to his critics, Bennett told the Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes":
"I'll not take instruction from Teddy Kennedy. A young woman likely drowned because of his negligence . . . . He should make no judgments at all about other people. He shouldn't be in the Senate."
Neither Kennedy nor Dean nor Reid has ever condemned Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, who rose to the rank of Grand Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan based on his ability to recruit new members.
In an autobiography released earlier this year, Byrd said the Klan was a "fraternal group" made up of "upstanding' people" - a characterization which drew no protest from Reid, Kennedy and Dean.
Oh nonsense he's not toast. I think he's handling this total non-issue very well. He's offered to debate this issue with anyone. He's allowed both sides of the argument on his show and acted like the true gentleman he is.
I didn't even know Bennett had a radio show, now his ratings are going to skyrocket, no such thing as bad publicity.
If Bennett has been a black the remark would have gone un-noticed in the media.
The fact still remains that blacks commit crimes all out of proportion to their percentage of the population whatever the reason.
Blacks are also victims of crime all out of proportion to their numbers in the population.
*************
LOL!! Good point.
He was thinking that other people will listen to what he said and then think about it. Big mistake. Anything can be taken out of context and change the entire meaning of the statement.
What if I said," I hate the demonRATs that hate George Bush", and someone selectively edits that to say, "I hate...George Bush". Is that the message that I meant to convey? Taking words out of context are done every day by the media and the constant repeating of the edited message changes the perception of what was really meant.
One can only wonder why a GOP president couldn't nominate a "throw-away" Supreme Court nominee who would spend his entire session before the Senate judiciary committee making statements like this.
Bennett ain't toast, either -- in fact, his radio comments have generated more publicity for himself than he could have paid for. To be honest with you, until yesterday I had no idea the guy even had a radio show.
Bill Cosby alluded to this during one of his infamous rants a few months ago. He was referring to the way even many well-meaning black parents he knew with strong religious convictions couldn't even set some basic behavioral standards for their kids. His comment was an absolute classic (I paraphrase here):
"What are you doing -- waiting for Jesus to come and pull your kid's pants up and put his hat on straight?"
I would like to say that Bennett is right - not because of their "blackness" but because of their "fatherlessness in the home".
And what political philosophy is solely responsbile for that situation?
"WHAT was he THINKING??? "
Only the TRUTH! Something even most republicans have forgotten the meaning of!
Along with INTEGRITY, HONOR, COURAGE, etc.
Depends on your definition of "toast". I remember when Pat Buchanan quoted crime statistics to make the point that if you eliminated all violent crimes committed by identified ethnic minorities, America would look a lot like Europe. Buchanan never formally "apologized" for that remark, but he "rehabilitated" himself in the eyes of the MSM by becoming a vocal critic of President Bush. So I suppose Bill Bennett could restore his media credibility by finding a point of disagreement with the President, and noisily trumpeting it in front of the MSM. Bill may ultimately lose his radio gig (not based on ratings, sadly, but on advertiser fear factor), but he will always have think tanks, talk show guest spots and books to fall back on. Hardly "toast".
He said that it would be TRUE that if you aborted ALL BLACK BABIES, the crime RATE would drop.
Is that true? If we eliminated the black race from the face of the earth, would our crime rate really drop? Do we know? Can you see how that statement could be considered racist, or worse?
I'm sorry, I'm not a Bennett-basher, but there is no good spin you can put on a statement that suggests that you could lower crime rates through genocide.
Some might want to argue that the statement IS true, just not politically correct. But I don't think we can pretend to know what such a drastic step would really do to our society. Yes, if all other things remained exactly the same, removing the black race from the crime statistics makes them look better. But we have no idea what society would be like if there were no black children.
It's not only true, it's a truISM. It is equally true that if you aborted all WHITE babies, crime would drop. It's a specious argument, either way, as he immediately made clear. That was Bennett's point.
Dan
This is the SAME problem. He is arguing that you should ignore economic and other rationale, if it leads to doing something morally wrong. He believes abortion is morally wrong. So his argument is that even if doing abortions would be economically HELPFUL, we shouldn't do them.
His EXAMPLE therefore is one where he accepts the premise of the truthfulness of the "benefit", in order to say that even though it would be a benefit, we shouldn't do it because the act of abortion is wrong.
And what is his "truthful benefit"? He says that you could eliminate all crime if you got rid of all blacks.
THAT is, in an of itself, a racist comment, even if he will then say that "But even though you could eliminate all crime, you shouldn't abort the black babies".
Aborting the black babies would NOT ELIMINATE ALL CRIME. His example is actually one of a FALSE benefit. He wasn't ARGUING FALSE benefits, he was arguing TRUE BENEFITS.
Like it or not, Benett has now SAID, and has REPEATED, and has even PHRASED IN A DIFFERENT WAY, the racist comment that all crime is caused by blacks, or that crime is predominantly a problem because of blacks, and that if we just got rid of all blacks, crime would either go away, or be reduced in a measurable way.
Sanger wanted abortions to cleanse the races. She was wrong on TWO COUNTS. First that we should ever abort -- because abortion is evil. Second that cleansing the race is a good thing, IT IS NOT. Bennett's statement is like saying that Sanger was RIGHT that cleansing the race would be a good thing, but THAT doesn't justify the evil of Abortion.
And I'm guessing that none of us would support that position.
Bennett needs to apologize for suggesting that skin color alone is a factor in whether a person will be a criminal or not. Because that is what he said -- he said eliminating black babies would eliminate a source of crime.
So, how many people here think that, based solely on the color of a baby's skin, you can predict whether that baby will grow up to be a criminal.
In other words, do you believe blacks are genetically predisposed to crime, or do you rather believe that blacks commit more crime because of the circumstances of their lives (peer pressure, upbringing, leaders telling them they are oppressed, etc.). Because if you believe the 2nd, then you can't believe that aborting all the black babies would have any effect on crime -- those leaders would find another class of people to subjugate to their will.
I went real long here, but I just am having trouble fathoming how so many people seem to be OK with claiming that crime is a genetic trait of a race of people.
Glad to see a Conservative blast Teddy Kennedy publicly over Chappaquiddick. It should never be forgotten.
I'm not okay with it. I'm just posting it here to enrich the record.
Wishful thinking?
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