Posted on 09/30/2005 7:52:43 PM PDT by veronica
Former Drug Czar and Secretary of Education Bill Bennett's comments over skin color, crime and abortion have lots of folks howling, from Nancy Pelosi to Howard Dean to the NAACP to Ted Kennedy to the White House (go figure). What prompted this bipartisan outrage?
Here's the incendiary remark that he made on his popular radio program:
"…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."
Bennett has pointed out, correctly, that his remarks have been taken out of context. Even liberal commentators like Matt Yglesias and Brad DeLong feel the context of the remarks is mitigating and Bennett has no reason to apologize for them.
But let's forget about the context for a minute. Context can be so… so… oh, well, it can take all the fun out of it. So let's just focus on what Bennett said, totally out of context.
DeLong and Yglesias and are sufficiently reality-based enough to know that 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.
Bill Clinton claimed while he was president that he wanted to have a "national conversation on race." Perhaps he was being sincere. But it's plain from recent events that hardly anyone else in this country really, truly wants to have a "conversation" on this topic. If the mindless, knee-jerk reaction to Bennett's remarks -- including from places like the White House -- is any indicator, no one has any interest in an honest discussion of race.
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.
Liberals don't want a discussion .. they just want to paint Conservatives as all racists
Oh and that comment from the WH was made before the news came out Bennetts words were taken out of context
The best suggestion is to build a time machine and abort every pro-abortion-er.
Here's the incendiary remark that he made on his popular radio program:
"…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."
Bennett has pointed out, correctly, that his remarks have been taken out of context.
Well, then print the full quote. That's not the full quote.
And exactly which liberals defended Mr Bennett? Teddy Kennedy? Howitzer Dean? Ms. Clinton?
For how deep the liberals claim to think, I find it truly astonishing how they missed the point as to what Mr. Bennett was saying! Just another opportunity to bash the vast right wing conspiracy, IMHO.......
I mean, I suppose I could say, "If we gassed all the Jews, then Palestinian suicide attacks would go down" ... and, it probably would be true.
But why would I say such a thing? I mean, so what? I don't like abortions, and I don't like suicide attacks, and I don't promote abortions to reduce crime, and I don't promote genocide to reduce suicide attacks.
Ok, ok, ... he didn't "promote" it, I'm taking it out of context.
But man, it doesn't sound very moral what he said, and it was, like I said in other postings, pretty torturous. It's like talking about "food taken, after mixing with digestive fluids, turns into (blank)", and it would be true, but that's something for a book or such, no really a talk show unless you're goofy. Thanks for helping the conservative movement, Bennett.
You blew it Bennett.
VOTE FOR ARNOLD SECOND TERM
Rush said today that libs want to criminalize conservatism. Many truths and topics can't be discussed because of inane political correctness and its ideological stalinists.
"IDIOTARIAN" is right.
Even of course, when Republicans put an African-American on the Supreme Court, whom the Libs then set out to destroy.
It took two full 24-hour news cycles before this story started making the rounds. That tells me that initially no one really gave a damn, until someone like Nancy Pelosi decided to make it an issue, even though railing for pro-abortion (She masks it either as "pro-choice" or "Roe", to make it all sound warm and fuzzy), is her pet issue.
Bennett should stick to Las Vegas. His odds are better there. On talk radio, stupid things come out of his mouth.
Opps. I'm starting to sound like Bill Bennett.
I knew it!
It's not stupid when you hear the full quote. That's the problem. The MSM is making an effort to hide the final segment of the quote to make us eat our own.
Or as Richard Nixon claimed to have said, "Yes, we could do that. [long pause] But it would be wrong."
Bennett raised questions about the caller's premise, saying that according to that logic, the argument in the book Freakonomics — that allowing abortion reduces crime — would be equally valid.
Referring to the book's hypothesis, Bennett told the caller, "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."
Bennett continued: "That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do. But your crime rate would go down."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170840,00.html
Well said.
Saying it and actually doing it are two different things. Bennett ended his on-air remark, something to the effect "aborting blacks to reduce crime would be dangerous and stupid".
You are taking Bennett out of context.
In context, his words make perfect sense AND they are the opposite of your claim.
By the way, why do you hate Jews?
Exactly, and all these comments about Republicans and Conservatives being "corrupt" and racist can be traced back to Hurricane Katrina and it's aftermath (including Bush's primetime speech) and the President announcing John Roberts as the next USSC nominee this past Summer.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.