Bennett under fire for remarks

CNN Congressional Democrats blasted former Education Secretary William Bennett on Thursday for saying that aborting "every black baby in this country" would reduce the crime rate, and demanded their Republican counterparts do the same....

A lot of crime (both black on black, and black on white) is committed by blacks so the statement is certainly true. It is insensitive, but since the very next thing he said was that he found doing it morally reprehensible I think those that jumped on him are being unfair.

In this extreme environment the Dems have created, now they not only will jump on someone for proposing something, but also for one sentence in a thought that says it is a bad idea.

The question he was responding to, was if all of the black babies that had been aborted had not been, would Social Security been in better shape. I am not sure whether his response, which was no, is correct. Certainly if all of the black AND white babies that have been aborted since Roe v Wade had not been, Social Security would be in a lot better shape, since there would be more workers contributing to support those retired. It still would have gone bankrupt; the Ponzi Scheme still would eventually have collapsed, but the date the bankrupcy date would be further in the future.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters on Friday that President Bush "believes the comments were not appropriate." .... Bennett stood by his comments Thursday night. "I was putting forward a hypothetical proposition. Put that forward. Examined it. And then said about it that it's morally reprehensible. To recommend abortion of an entire group of people in order to lower your crime rate is morally reprehensible. But this is what happens when you argue that the ends can justify the means," he told CNN. "I'm not racist, and I'll put my record up against theirs," referring to Pelosi and other critics. "I've been a champion of the real civil rights issue of our times -- equal educational opportunities for kids." "We've got to have candor and talk about these things while we reject wild hypotheses," Bennett said. "I don't think people have the right to be angry, if they look at the whole thing. But if they get a selective part of my comment, I can see why they would be angry. If somebody thought I was advocating that, they ought to be angry. I would be angry." "But that's not what I advocate."

OTB blogged Even aside from the genocide issue, that blacks (or the young, or the poor, or white males, for that matter) commit crimes at a statistically significant higher rate than the population as a whole is incontrovertible.

echidne blogged Quite a few people are discussing Bennett's statement out of context but even within context it's fairly bad. He picks African-Americans as the group to use in his stupid example, and that is racist. Because if he had really wanted to make the point by picking a group with very high crime rates he should have suggested aborting all male fetuses. And don't you now go saying that I have advocated that, because I didn't. I just pointed out how one can see that Bennett uses an "out-group" for his example, and by doing that he others the members of that group.