Posted on 10/03/2005 1:34:21 AM PDT by goldstategop
The current flap over former Secretary of Education William Bennett’s remarks last week reveals just what a bizarre set of taboos Americans have imposed on themselves when it comes to race—and what a political booby trap leftists have managed to rig around the subject, ready to explode in a burst of career-destroying shrapnel at the slightest misstep. Yes, it was insensitive of Mr. Bennett to notice the fact that black Americans commit violent crimes in highly disproportionate numbers. It’s worth making a special effort not to incriminate the vast majority of law-abiding black citizens—many of whom grow up poor in broken homes, subjected to stronger temptations than those of us who grew up differently. Given the history of eugenics in the last century, one can understand a certain touchiness on the subject. But the ferocity with which liberals pounced on Bennett—so soon after accusing President Bush of racism for FEMA’s failure to (do black Mayor Ray Nagin’s job for him and) rescue black New Orleanians—betray a profound political cynicism, and a willingness to seize crassly (and selectively) upon human tragedy to make cheap rhetorical points.
To recap the Bennett flap: Mr. Bennett is being condemned for a slip of the tongue which contravened the rules of polite discourse which govern how crime is depicted in mainstream media. Bennett was speaking on the radio about an assertion by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, who claimed in their ludicrously overpraised book Freakonomics that abortion decreases crime—essentially by imposing capital punishment in advance on babies who are more likely to grow up as felons. Let’s leave aside for a moment how morally repulsive this idea is—reeking of precisely the same eugenic logic preached by Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, who called for “more children from the fit, fewer from the unfit.” Worse than evil, this argument isn’t even valid. It has been comprehensively dismantled by the clear-thinking and candid Steve Sailer, who showed that the crime decline attributed by Dubner and Levitt to legal abortion in fact had far more to do with a decline in the popularity of crack, and the election of mayors such as Rudolph Giuliani in New York. Since blacks are disproportionately the victims as well of violent crime, any improvement in public order will save far more black lives and livelihoods than white. Of course, because most such tough-on-crime mayors are Republican, they won’t get the credit for this.
Now you’d think that a couple of economists who spoke with thinly veiled enthusiasm about culling entire social classes before they are born in order to kill off future criminals would find themselves exiled from decent society. I know I wouldn’t sit down and eat with this kind of creep. But far from ostracism, Messrs. Dubner and Levitt are heroes. Their book is a massive best-seller, recently excerpted by the New York Times. How did they manage this coup? Because they didn’t mention race. They presented their argument about thinning out the crop of future felons, and conveniently left out the fact that most of these children aborted would be poor, and either Hispanic or black. This allowed the reader to fill in the blank—and fantasize about suppressing the crime rate a little more, and maybe reclaiming some blighted neighborhoods as well, by arranging for “fewer children from the unfit.” I once heard people talking precisely this way at a cocktail party, and stepped in to ask them, “By that logic, why don’t you just carpet bomb the ghetto? That would cut crime too.” Without cracking a smile, one of them said, “That wouldn’t be as politically palatable.” I steered clear of this knot of sociopaths for the rest of the evening.
Now Mr. Bennett, in his commentary, was making the same point I was, which Steven Sailer reiterates—that the theory presented by Dubner and Levitt is “impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible.” But in the course of his comments, Bennett made the mistake of noticing the African elephant in the bathtub—the fact that since the residents of America’s prisons are disproportionately black, people who daydream about emptying those prisons by killing off their residents before they are even born are fantasizing about killing black people. This fact was noticed decades ago by no less a race-baiter than the Rev. Jesse Jackson, when he called legal abortion “black genocide.” That hasn’t stopped Jackson from supporting legal abortion, however—or cozying up to President Bill Clinton, who as commander in chief ordered the withdrawal of U.S. peace-keeping forces from Rwanda, leaving millions of defenseless Tutsis to be slaughtered with machetes, while our and other nations’ blue helmets sped off to safety in other countries. Now which U.S. president was it, again, who doesn’t care about saving the lives of black people? (For a scathing look at Clinton’s blatant disregard for millions of African lives, see the powerful new documentary Broken Promises: The UN at 60, narrated by Ron Silver—coming soon to theaters.)
The irony gets richer; Reverend Jackson’s son, the Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., has insisted that “William Bennett should be censured and fined by the Federal Communications Commission for his repugnant and barbarous remarks.” Do you think the younger Jackson has forgotten his own father’s remarks—or that he’s unaware that black Americans are the primary targets of those who would promote abortion in order to thin out the ranks of the poor? Or is he simply and cynically ignoring the facts?
Instead, I would suggest, the younger Jackson is playing masterfully by the rules of racial rhetoric as they are currently laid out in American discourse. As this affair makes clear, among these commandments, three are the greatest:
1) Thou shalt ignore any statistics that cast racial minorities, even provisionally, in an unflattering light.
2) Thou shalt condemn anyone who mentions these statistics as a racist, even if you know that he is not a racist. The truth is not important. The important thing is the taboo.
3) Thou mayst entertain and promote racist fantasies of eliminating poor babies, Hispanic babies, and black babies in the womb, so long as you don’t mention their racist. It’s okay to kill them, but not to mention their race.
Now that we’ve gotten all that clear, we can watch as Mr. Bennett is hounded into apology after apology, and perhaps driven out of public life, while the upper-class leftists who live in gated communities or high-rises with doormen indulge their bloodthirsty daydreams, secure in the knowledge that they’re not racists. Not at all.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
"Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."
– Theodore Dalrymple
Sort of sums up our present level of discourse here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, no?
There is the fourth commandment and that one the parent of the other three: POLITICAL CORRECTNESS. A form of censorship that saturates most discourse in the MSM & MSP as well as in school text books leaving only the Socialist's in America standing in any given day. Mr. Bennett is just one more victim of Political Correctness.
Race is and always has been a trap. I think it's better to judge people based on a more global characterization such as "western values" and "other values". In Europe, many desperate Africans die every day just for an opportunity to live in a society with western values. In America, people of varying ethnicities are suffering due to "other values". Race has little to do with it.
I don't think the US had any peacekeeping forces in Rwanda to withdraw. The criticism has been that we didn't send forces in, not that we pulled those that were present out. IOW, that we didn't act unilaterally.
"Millions" of Tutsis were not slaughtered. Estimates range from 400,000 to 800,000 total killed in the genocide. A large number of these were Hutus who the killers considered insufficiently supportive of the genocide of Tutsis.
Simple factual mistakes like these severely impact the credibility of the other statements the author makes.
Poverty has not a thing to do with crime. Crime is the end result of disrespect fostered by jealousy and envy. There has been endless lack of respect taught at many levels, that there is some sort of unwritten right to take from others if you lack possession of some sort of internal compass. This trait is unrelated to economic status.
Nowhere in the Ten Commandmants is there any admonition, "Thou shalt not be rich." There are various ways in which you may not enrich yourself, such as stealing, or coveting your neighbor's wealth, or turning to the worship of Mammon, and certainly there is a strong prohibition against killing, for the purposes of taking the goods that once belonged to a person now dead.
All that aside, poverty is a state of mind, not an economic condition. Even the poorest among us has, from time to time, come onto a windfall. This is a grace, bestowed upon the randomly selected, that for even an instant, gives the illusion that wealth may come to anyone. One may do one of two things with a windfall, either splurge and disperse it with all possible haste (some haste is more possible than others), or use the new-found capital to build and take on a calculated risk, in the hopes of greater return in the future.
Consider the plight of a winner of a multi-million dollar lottery. Unprepared for the burdens of sudden wealth, the tendency is to vastly overestimate the limits of that fortune, and spend it quickly. Very corrosive to the character, the victim of this endowment is left bereft and often in a degree of debt unimaginable before the influx of cash. That is the essense of poverty, the inability or unwillingness to manage money in any sense.
Good post!
Nobody has ever given me a logical or scientific, as opposed to a moral, reason why such a policy is inappropriate.
Generally speaking, throughout the world, successful people reproduce at a much lower rate than unsuccessful people. Over time, it is logical that this will result in a reduction in the average competence of the human race as a whole, and a growing percentage of less-competent and perhaps even less-intelligent people.
This is, in a sense, evolution in reverse. It is "survival of the less fit." No sentient farmer would ever put such a breeding program in place for his stock. Humans are not just animals, but we are animals, and as such are as subject to the laws of genetics as any other animal.
Nobody wants to talk about the possible consequences of such a policy over the long run.
Margaret Sanger is a Liberal Saint.
I generally agree with your post as regards to the US, and to a lesser extent with regard to other developed countries.
However, we should recognize that in much of the world, there are indeed far fewer opportunities available.
As has been pointed out, the level of work and striving that will keep you alive in China or Vietnam will make you rich in America.
Individual effort is critical, but it is not the only factor influencing whether a given person will be poor.
"so long as you don’t mention their racist."
This does not scan. He either meant "so long as you don’t mention that they're racist" or "so long as you don’t mention their race".
"Yes, it was insensitive of Mr. Bennett to notice the fact that black Americans commit violent crimes in highly disproportionate numbers."
We must be sensitive at all times.
Nice quote.
Actually, I didn't even hear it as declarative as that blacks commit crimes in higher proportions than other sectors of the population. I understood it, perhaps naively, as him saying that if you remove ANY segment of the population there will likely be less crime than if those people existed.
"In Europe, many desperate Africans die every day just for an opportunity to live in a society with western values."
And Western pay rates, working conditions, housing standards, crime rates, legal protections, and welfare.
Not less crime, but lower the crime rate. Big difference. That was what got him in trouble, because if you eliminate a group with a high crime rate, you lower the overall crime rate.
"No sentient farmer would ever put such a breeding program in place for his stock."
That is why parents what their kids to go to top colleges, whose admissions directors select for the highest intelligence. Attendance at one of the top schools brands one as being top breeding stock. This was the main theme of The Bell Curve.
In order to have a productive society you do not need everyone to be highly intelligent, but you do need a certain percentage to be highly intelligent, as a glance around the world shows.
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