Rule #4 of Salinsky's Rules for Radicals. Textbook leftism.
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They're going fast!
Posted on 09/30/2005 6:24:29 PM PDT by veronica
Bill Bennett stresses our morality…and pays the price.
In the course of a free-wheeling conversation so common on talk-format programs, 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.
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.
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.
Here’s what happened. 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, 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.
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.”
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.
We are currently at war with Islamo-fascists, and our greatest fear is another domestic attack that could kill tens of thousands of Americans. The attacks we have suffered to this point have been inflicted, almost exclusively, by Muslim aliens from particular Arabic and African countries. Would it greatly reduce the chance of another domestic attack if we deported every non-American Muslim from those countries? Of course it would — how could it not? But it is not something that we should or would consider doing. It would be a cure so much worse than the disease that it would sully us as a people, while hurting thousands of innocent people in the process.
The salient thing here is the moral judgment. But, to be demonstrated compellingly, the moral judgment requires a dilemma that pits values against values. Remarkably, Bennett is being criticized for being able to frame such a dilemma — which was wholly hypothetical — but given no credit for the moral judgment — which was authentically his.
Statistics have long been kept on crime, breaking it down in various ways, including by race and ethnicity. Some identifiable groups, considered as a group, commit crime at a rate that is higher than the national rate.
Blacks are such a group. That is simply a fact. Indeed, our public discourse on it, even among prominent African Americans, has not been to dispute the numbers but to argue over the causes of the high rate: Is it poverty? Breakdown of the family? Undue police attention? Other factors — or some combination of all the factors? We argue about all these things, but the argument always proceeds from the incontestable fact that the rate is high.
The rate being high, it is an unavoidable mathematical reality that if the number of blacks, or of any group whose rate outstripped the national rate, were reduced or eliminated from the national computation, the national rate would go down.
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.
Abortion, moreover, is a grave moral issue in its own right. It merits consideration on its own merits, wholly apart from its incidental effects on innumerable matters — crime rate and social security solvency being just two.
“[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. Plus he was right, which ought to count for something even in what passes for today’s media critiques.
"Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, thought much the same thing as Bennett."
She, too, thought abortion morally reprehensible?
"Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, thought much the same thing as Bennett."
Ah, Swedge...Since September 28, 2005. Racist As*hole. Dem troll.
Go back to DU where you can chat with your own brand of liars.
Rule #4 of Salinsky's Rules for Radicals. Textbook leftism.
If you want a Google GMail account, FReepmail me.
They're going fast!
lol
"He's not a politician, he is a philosopher. And, no, it was not assinine. It's about time that conservatives, no matter what the stripe, stopped worrying about what the other side says. I'm done w/liberals telling ME what to talk about. Political Correctness is done in my book. Tell it like it is. If you don't like the heat...... get out of the kitchen. Repubs need to get some SPINE."
OK. Then here's my statement: If we could just kill all white people living in trailer parks, we'd practically eliminate the methamphetamine plague this country is experiencing. Now, I'm not endorsing that stance, but that would halt meth usage in this country.
If Bennett is a philosopher, then so are you & I.
"I can't believe those who think this sort of rhetoric is perfectly OK for politicians or public officials."
Yep. Apparently, anything goes for anyone with an (R) beside their name.
Meanwhile, can you imagine the outrage here if Jester Jackson said: "Killing all the white people in trailer parks would halt the methamphetamine scourge afflicting this country, not that I'm endorsing such genocide."?
"Any "conservative" who condemns Bennett for saying the uncomfortable and unfortunate truth about crime and the black American community should not be considered a conservative. The one bedrock conservative value is truth, and it is undeniably true that young black American males commit serious crimes at a far greater per capita rate than any other ethnic group. If his critics can prove his statement to be incorrect, then let's see the proof."
OK, as long as you'd have similar "Yeah, he's right!" feelings when some Jester Jackson/Lewis Phoneykhan makes a statement along the lines of killing all white people in trailer parks to reduce meth usage, because - hey, statistically, that WOULD cut down meth usage, "not that I'm endorsing it.", or "Killing all illegal Mexican immigrants would drive up the price of day labor for American businesses, not that I'm for such measures."
See, even though it may be a 'statistical fact', most sane people don't even let the idea of killing off an ethnic race of babies enter their mind.
Those who criticize Bennett seem to fall into two groups.
The first and least honest group says that Bennett advocated aborting black babies to reduce crime. It is obvious to anyone who reads Bennett's remark in context that he didn't say that.
The second group says that Bennett was associating blacks as a group with criminality. This is true enough, and is grounded in fact: blacks commit crimes at a far higher rate than the general population. However, this is a politically incorrect fact that liberals insist not be mentioned, and Bennett mentioned it.
For Bush to leave Bennett twisting in the wind over this was very wrong.
What a stupid thing to say, I guess he gets a bit more spotlight before he retires down to Alantic City.
I can list a thousand things that are true that should not be said during a broadcast.
Here's their blog: http://www.democrats.com/node/6300
Here's my (now deleted) message: comment-39840
Here's almost the same thing, in a pair of messages at "daily kos." So far, they haven't been deleted: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/28/194633/686#37
Here's most of the Daily Kos version:
First, let us acknowledge the fact that crime rates are partially correlated with various demographics. Men commit more crimes than women. Young adults commit more crimes than middle aged and older adults. Single Americans commit more crimes than married Americans. Black Americans commit more crimes than white Americans. Etc., etc.. Those are just facts, proved by statistics, which any honest and even moderately well informed person must acknowledge are true. Facts are stubborn things, but they are not racist, sexist, or ageist. They are simply true.But so what? Does that mean we should kill all the young single black men, to reduce crime? Of course not. Nobody to the right of Peter Singer would advocate such a thing.
So why does anyone suppose that Bill Bennett did? Bennett is famously pro-life, so you know he wasn't advocating abortion. His point, made via reductio ad absurdum, was obviously about the offensiveness of basing arguments about abortion, which is the murder of innocent children, on mere economics.
You don't have to agree with his point to acknowledge that that was obviously the point he was making. He might have said, "should we promote or opposed abortion if economists said that it would make the trains run on time?" But instead of paraphrasing defenders of Mussolini, Bennett chose a reference more pertinent to a discussion about abortion. He parodied Steven D. Levitt, and loosly paraphrased that icon of the American Left, the founder of Planned Parenthood (then called the American Birth Control League), Margaret Sanger.
Sanger was a notorious racist and eugenicist, and an early admirer of Adolf Hitler. Bennett knows that Sanger infamously advocated birth control for Negroes and other "inferior" people, "to create a race of thoroughbreds." (ref: The Birth Control Review, Nov. 1921) That's why she located her birth control clinics in minority neighborhoods: to reduce birthrates in those communities.
Hey, when some guy slams one of your idols, it is understandable that you might be offended. But it appears that nobody on the Left understands WHY they should be offended by what Bill Bennett said.
Did all the liberals really miss the allusion to Sanger? Or are they just pretending to think Bennett is racist, to score political points?
-Dave
dave146 at burtonsys.com
It is obvious that you don’t like Bennett. I like him better than you do, but he preaches, and I don’t enjoy being preached at except by people I strongly respect. I have heard about Bennett’s gambling problems, but it’s his money.
I can't believe anyone would defend this guy. Because he is what? a REPUBLICAN?
No, that’s not it. I criticized (Republican) Bush in the same post. I defended Bennett because he was falsely accused. I just don't like false accusation, and I am especially fed up with Democrats falsely accusing Republicans of racism.
Since the left spits out garbage the right should be able to do the same?
Garbage is garbage, ours or theirs. This time, it is the accusations against Bennett that are garbage. After.over 20 years in the public eye, after all his books and speeches and television appearances, it is obvious that Bennett does not promote racism, and is not a racist. One ambiguous sentence, and now he’s Bull Connor? That is so dishonest it is barely worth refuting.
Thats no way to reach higher ground now is it?
It is impossible to reach higher ground if one side tries relentlessly to drag the other back into the swamp, given the slightest excuse. I am sick of political correctness that makes people fearfully tip-toe around racial issues. Oh, someone might be offended!!! Screw it. How do you expect to make progress without open communication? How do you expect to have open communication when one side can get away with pulling a stunt like this, taking Bennett’s words out of context manufacturing a scandal out of thin air?
I can list a thousand things that are true that should not be said during a broadcast.
Since you must know that Bennett was not advocating aborting blacks, I guess you must mean that he should not have implied that the black crime rate was higher than the national average. Why not? It is common knowledge, and it was relevant to his subject. It is also common knowledge that most blacks are not criminals. If Bennett continually harped on the high black crime rate, you would have a point, but he does not do that.
Right, and my opinion was not said to diminish yours.
You are ignoring the context in which Bennett's allegedly "offensive" comment was made. The caller first raised the subject of abortion by citing unspecified studies which purport to show that the large number of abortions which took place in the 1970's and '80's is partially responsible for there being fewer taxpayers today and in the future, hence the impending shortage of funds for SS, Medicare, and the like. In that context it is quite understandable that Bennett would also mention abortion in attempting to illustrate a point relevant to the caller's comments. Can any one of us say that we would have had the presence of mind NOT to make a similar spur of the moment comment under those same circumstances? I certainly can't.
I had read and heard about the uproar over Bennett's unpardonable sin before I heard a tape of the broadcast conversation. When I finally heard the tape I was incredulous that so much controversy, outrage, and general silliness could have been provoked by such an innocuous comment. Talk about your tempests in a teapot, the artificial outrage over this non-event which has been ginned up by the liberal MSM is a teapot tempest for the record book IMO.
I find it equally incredible that so many supposedly conservative FR regulars would leap at the chance to join hands with the MSM opportunists to condemn Bennett for what was at the very worst nothing more than using poor judgment.
"for what was at the very worst nothing more than using poor judgment."
Which is my main complaint, btw. That it was a stupid thing to say for someone in his position, since everything he says will be magnified and used against the (R) party.
Everything McLellan says is vetted by his superiors. He does not make up the statements, he just reads them.
This is tardy but I wish to register that my initial feeling was that Bennett should have 'known his enemy' to the degree that he would only use what could be a series of soundbite quotables in public and still make his point. However I realize I was wimping out and I now believe we must stand our ground as Conservatives and still have our freedom of speech and let the libs do whatever they do, which is so over the top evil that more and more Americans will see the Truth. I HOPE AND PRAY!!!
He was using a Jonathan Swift like proposal to argue that utilitarion arguments both FOR or AGAINST abortion can be absurd and dangerous.
That was precisely the point he was attemptiong to make.
He was cautioning against using utilitarian arguments either FOR or AGAINST abortion as they "cut both ways."
Bill Bennett is a private citizen. He doesn't work for the Bush administration. Therefore, the WH should have STFU.
Maybe the WH should start issuing statements condemning leftists for comparing the President to Bull Connor and other assorted vile names, instead of condemning a conservative's right to speak.
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