WILL BLACK ABORTIONS SOLVE CRIME?

By Peter Fredson

William Bennett, Republican hack politician, former Reagan administration Education Secretary, Director of Drug Control policy under George Bush the First, author of “The Book of Virtues” and someone who lost 8 million dollars on high-stakes gambling is back defending his party’s anti-abortion stance. He informed his radio program audience that if we aborted all black babies then the crime rate would reduce drastically.

On his radio show Bennett told a caller, "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. That would be an impossibly ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down."

Bennett is fully and completely committed to propagandizing the anti-abortion stand of his party at every opportunity. Often his speeches refer to the death of innocent babies, the beginnings of life, and how abortion leads to other forms of criminal behavior.

Bennett defended his shocking statement as follows: “Well, the context was a radio show that I was doing yesterday, and the topic was abortion and we were talking about bad arguments in regard to abortion. A caller suggested he was opposed to abortion because he said if there were more babies there would be, eventually, more tax payers and a larger GNP, a smaller deficit. I said you want to be careful with that kind of argument because someone could postulate a situation where child’s not likely to be a productive taxpayer. I said, arguments in which you take something that’s far out, like the GNP and try to connect it up with abortion are tricky. I said make the case of abortion on the basis of life and protecting life. I said abortion is invoked in another way; you could make an argument that if you wanted to lower the crime rate, you saw the quote; you could practice abortion in very large numbers. You could do it in the black community; you could do it in other places. This is, by the way, the subject of a book for economics by a professor at Yale.”

Bennett did not specify what "other places" might be, but instead he kept the focus on Black Americans.

Postulating that aborting all blacks would improve America was a bad strategy, even just to prove a point. Bennett doesn’t understand that such remark is reprehensible to most Americans, and reveals subconscious ideas of the speaker. Bennett might have used the example of Poor Americans, but he specified Black Americans. That is psychologically damaging to his contention that he did not mean to denigrate blacks.

Many people do not buy his argument that he did not mean to be offensive. They think his remark was heinous and racist, and that someone who had headed the U.S. Department of Education should certainly have known not to make stupid statements. What is worse is that he doesn’t seem to realize that people are upset but he continues to defend his remarks.

However, most of his Republican colleagues did not want to talk about the issue, or shuffled it off with remarks indicating that Bennett was misunderstood.

To its credit, The White House criticized William Bennett for remarks linking the crime rate and the abortion of black babies. "The president believes the comments were not appropriate," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said, without further specificity. The President is in enough trouble at present and does not want to be involved in some very dangerous discussion which could sink him completely.

Bennett says he could have made the same point about other groups, but didn’t. He made it about Blacks, and that seems racist. He might have said that aborting all the spoiled rich kids would stop us from having lying presidents and warmongering neocons.

A Blogger suggested that "You could kill every Jew in Israel, and there would be less violence in the Middle East. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your level of violence would go down."

Another blogger replied: "If we aborted all Jewish babies, we’d have lot fewer shyster lawyers and Hollywood scumbags."

Lets see...Using Bennett’s NeoCon Republican Logic, if we aborted all NeoCon Republicans then corruption in Government would disappear.

If we aborted all the Irish we would have no policemen in Boston. And who would make whiskey, drink beer, sing “Danny Boy”, and write poetry? If we aborted all the Polacks who would dance Polkas and play accordions? If we aborted all Canadians who would we kid? If we aborted all silly fat blondes we would have no one to console lonely rich old men. If we aborted all liars who would become President? If we aborted all politicians, who would we depend on to pass all the pork bills, make war, and award fat contracts to corrupt cronies? Ad absurdum sure, but emotionally exciting.

Bennett did at least acknowledge that actually aborting black babies to reduce crime was a horrible thing to do, but that’s not the problem with his remarks; the problem is that he believes it would work. He might have said, reasonably, “If you abort every baby in this country, the crime rate would go down to zero.” But Bennett included the word “black babies.”

It was a racist remark designed to overtly sell the idea that mainly blacks commit crimes.

Bennett may not be racist or that he mistakenly created an absurd, extreme example - he made a choice to do so.

Aborting black babies is to pick an easily identifiable group, an easy target for defamation. If Bennett had chosen to abort gay babies to prevent AIDS it might raise the question of being or becoming gay.

A slogan like “abort all feminists” would certainly require Bennett’s immediate suspension. Certainly the remarks of a woman baseball team owner about the virtues of Hitler resulted in grave discipline against her.

Even George Steinbrenner was castigated for using intemperate language. We have yet to learn if Bennett will be removed as a radio commentator, but judging from Republican comments this will be shrugged off and time will dampen any effect.

Bennett knows about language, he taught philosophy, he knows about the media, he is not just speaking extemporaneously so we are struck by his choice of language.

Why aborting black babies? Because it is an easily identifiable group - saying "if we aborted all gay babies we wouldn’t have AIDS", wouldn’t work because it raises the question of how/when someone is gay. Saying "aborting all feminists" wouldn’t work for similar reasons.

Even, "aborting all Jews, we wouldn’t have ..." wouldn’t work because of the choice of religion vs. ethnicity - no, for the sake of his argument he had to select a characteristic that was clear, unambiguous and a non-choice of the baby in question - gender couldn’t work, so race was clearly the card to play.

Another blogger said: “But why black babies? Why not "if we aborted all Hispanic babies, we wouldn’t have wetbacks", or "if we aborted all Irish babies, we wouldn’t have alcoholics or poets" - all of those examples are too weak - so for maximum effect, it had to be black babies.”“And, why crime rates? Why not poverty rates? Why not education (since Bennett was an education secretary, even if ineffectual). Why not sickle-cell anemia? Why not jazz? Why not rap? No, it had to be crime, again to have maximum effect for his audience.”

“Bennett claims his words were taken "out of context". He better get used to people trying to dissect his words and figure out exactly what context he was working on.”
“Posted by: pebird | Sep 30, 2005 9:45:54 AM”

"The fact that so many white Americans completely failed to even notice that element of Bennett’s argument is an indication of how deep racism goes in American society, left and right alike."

The callousness and inhumanity of Bennett’s statement deserves to be front-and-center

Bill Bennett, unrepentant and unashamed, blasted his critics, 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 also referred to the Klan connection of Senator Byrd in a “tu quoque” aside. He called justifications for abortion “ridiculous and morally reprehensible.” This is a typical Republican response to criticism, shifting the grounds of discourse from defense to attack.

The Right is becoming more open about the genocidal fantasies guiding its policies. It is not political correctness that is abhorrent but moral character, which Bennett seems to lack.

Also, some True Believers believe that poverty is God’s punishment for sins of the fathers of the poor, and therefore any attempt to alleviate the conditions of poverty would be to challenge the Supreme Creator of the Universe.