William Bennett, Cheerleader for Abortion Rights
Aren't these people special?
"George Bush has distanced himself from comments made by a leading Republican crusader on moral values who declared that one way to reduce the crime rate in the US would be to 'abort black babies.'"
I suppose I'd distance myself too. Although it would be easier for me to do, given that I don't head up a party which once saw fit to make this drooling, crypto-genocidal caricature of a human being secretary of education. That's right, our special man of the day is William Bennett, not only secretary of education under Reagan, but also chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He conducted a little "thought experiment" on his radio show, in which he demonstrated -- convincingly, I imagine, to the kind of people who listen to Bill Bennett -- that all you'd have to do was abort every single one of those black kids, and you'd sure clean up the streets.
Bill's precise words: "If you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose; you could abort every black baby in this country."
He followed that up with the suggestion that this would be "impossible." Also "ridiculous." Thanks Bill. It would be kind of silly, wouldn't it. And so difficult to pull off.
Finally, he suggested that it would be "morally reprehensible." Well, yes.
He was careful, however, to cap this probing moral distinction with the reminder: "but your crime rate would go down." Which is what really matters, if we're going to be all daring and philosophical.
Equally deep thinkers could well argue that this intriguing hypothesis be more fully investigated. Why not abort all children? And just to be, you know, intellectually rigorous, murder their parents as well? I guarantee -- and this is incontrovertible -- that crime would be completely and permanently eradicated. (To give Bill credit, he did include in his thought experiment the race-neutral abortion of all children: yes, even those that aren't black. But he didn't properly examine the efficacy of lining up their parents and shooting them.)
Bill has a problem, though, mathematically speaking. Given that he's "a leading Republican crusader on moral values," surely he must insist -- or he'd lose this honorific -- that abortion itself is a crime. So, let's see: by aborting all black children ("murder," I believe, is how leading Republican crusaders on moral values see it), Bennett would be causing a huge spike in the murder stats -- the assumption being that this brief genocidal spike would be more than compensated for by all those murderers that wouldn't get born.
Let's do the math, however: in order to balance the books, murder-wise, this would mean that each of those aborted black babies would have to have become -- had he or she not been murdered by a leading Republican crusader on moral values -- a murderer. Or you're still seeing a bit of an uptick in crime, statistically speaking. Every murdered murderer would constitute a murder. And the murdered non-murderers... well, you see the problem. Hm. I guess it would even out if we assumed that a lot of those unborn murderers were in fact latent serial killers. I mean, the aborted murderers would have to do a fair bit of murdering in order to make up for the aborted innocents.
Luckily, the media has accustomed us, in the past couple of weeks, to think of most black Americans -- poor ones, anyway -- as rapists of babies, so I suppose it's not too hard to make this mental leap: sure, hell, they're all basically serial killers. The thought experiment works! Right? I think... Okay, I'm not so good at thinking this way. Which is why they pay people like Bennett the big bucks -- I'd make a lousy secretary of education.
Yes, I defer to the expert. Bill Bennett -- with his "multi-million dollar gambling habit" -- clearly knows a lot more about morality than I do. I mean, I have opinions, but he's written whole books about this stuff: The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals; and Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism.
Moral clarity. If I had some of that, I suppose I'd be outraged that we weren't taking clothes hangers to black children in the womb.
"George Bush has distanced himself from comments made by a leading Republican crusader on moral values who declared that one way to reduce the crime rate in the US would be to 'abort black babies.'"
I suppose I'd distance myself too. Although it would be easier for me to do, given that I don't head up a party which once saw fit to make this drooling, crypto-genocidal caricature of a human being secretary of education. That's right, our special man of the day is William Bennett, not only secretary of education under Reagan, but also chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He conducted a little "thought experiment" on his radio show, in which he demonstrated -- convincingly, I imagine, to the kind of people who listen to Bill Bennett -- that all you'd have to do was abort every single one of those black kids, and you'd sure clean up the streets.
Bill's precise words: "If you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose; you could abort every black baby in this country."
He followed that up with the suggestion that this would be "impossible." Also "ridiculous." Thanks Bill. It would be kind of silly, wouldn't it. And so difficult to pull off.
Finally, he suggested that it would be "morally reprehensible." Well, yes.
He was careful, however, to cap this probing moral distinction with the reminder: "but your crime rate would go down." Which is what really matters, if we're going to be all daring and philosophical.
Equally deep thinkers could well argue that this intriguing hypothesis be more fully investigated. Why not abort all children? And just to be, you know, intellectually rigorous, murder their parents as well? I guarantee -- and this is incontrovertible -- that crime would be completely and permanently eradicated. (To give Bill credit, he did include in his thought experiment the race-neutral abortion of all children: yes, even those that aren't black. But he didn't properly examine the efficacy of lining up their parents and shooting them.)
Bill has a problem, though, mathematically speaking. Given that he's "a leading Republican crusader on moral values," surely he must insist -- or he'd lose this honorific -- that abortion itself is a crime. So, let's see: by aborting all black children ("murder," I believe, is how leading Republican crusaders on moral values see it), Bennett would be causing a huge spike in the murder stats -- the assumption being that this brief genocidal spike would be more than compensated for by all those murderers that wouldn't get born.
Let's do the math, however: in order to balance the books, murder-wise, this would mean that each of those aborted black babies would have to have become -- had he or she not been murdered by a leading Republican crusader on moral values -- a murderer. Or you're still seeing a bit of an uptick in crime, statistically speaking. Every murdered murderer would constitute a murder. And the murdered non-murderers... well, you see the problem. Hm. I guess it would even out if we assumed that a lot of those unborn murderers were in fact latent serial killers. I mean, the aborted murderers would have to do a fair bit of murdering in order to make up for the aborted innocents.
Luckily, the media has accustomed us, in the past couple of weeks, to think of most black Americans -- poor ones, anyway -- as rapists of babies, so I suppose it's not too hard to make this mental leap: sure, hell, they're all basically serial killers. The thought experiment works! Right? I think... Okay, I'm not so good at thinking this way. Which is why they pay people like Bennett the big bucks -- I'd make a lousy secretary of education.
Yes, I defer to the expert. Bill Bennett -- with his "multi-million dollar gambling habit" -- clearly knows a lot more about morality than I do. I mean, I have opinions, but he's written whole books about this stuff: The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals; and Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism.
Moral clarity. If I had some of that, I suppose I'd be outraged that we weren't taking clothes hangers to black children in the womb.
posted by Douglas Anthony Cooper at 12:53 AM - LINK
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