Morning in America

Today’s piñata of the left is Bill Bennett, which must mean it is a 10% day – the 10% of the days that they do not attempt to piñata President Bush.

All we see is a quote which says that Bill claimed “aborting 100% of black babies will reduce crime”. Never mind that it is true (because aborting 100% of any higher crime group will reduce crime because the crime rate is highest in the black community, which has the highest percentage of urban and poor members – the true indicators of likelihood of crime), or that no one mentions that the abortion rate in the black community is astronomically higher than any other group (which should make the crime rate lower than in other races, right? Whoops.) What is ridiculous, yet typical, is that Bill Bennett was not proposing the idea or even claiming it was reasonable – but the left and the media would have you believe that he was.

A discussion of what was said is here, at the Morning in America website. I actually heard the quote, because I have become more of a fan of Bill Bennett over the past two months. He is always respectful, courteous, and sounds like he is genuinely interested in what the callers talk about, whether it is Beltway politics or their casserole. Plus, he keeps to the “Socratic method of discourse”, which involves candor, courtesy and logic. All three are very appealing to me.

Anyway, the quote. It came from a suggestion about how reducing abortion could raise the GNP because we would have more taxpayers. Bill replied that such logic is faulty – you can no more link abortion to GNP than you could say that aborting 100% of black babies would reduce crime – because neither have any kind of causal relationship. In fact, Bill noted that the idea of trying to credibly link such morally reprehensible nonsense was the subject of a recent book, to demonstrate that logic and reason are seldom the order of the day – along with the lack of morality.

Of course, the left never mentions such context. The Washington Post claims they couldn’t reach Bill, who said on the air today which numbers that the Post has for him, and that they never called. I have linked above to Bennett’s interview on Hannity and Colmes above. Here is the transcript excerpt at Media Matters, which ain’t a right-wing site. Ignore the bold print, and read what isn’t bold. Clearly Bennett is pointing out that the idea is stupid. ABC News also tries to claim it was a racist comment, but at least they posted Bennett’s reply: In an interview with ABC News, Bennett said that anyone who knows him knows he isn't racist. He said he was merely extrapolating from the best-selling book "Freakonomics," which posits the hypothesis that falling crimes rates are related to increased abortion rates decades ago. "It would have worked for, you know, single-parent moms; it would have worked for male babies, black babies," Bennett said.

All of which are true. Duh.

Here’s my proof that the left does not seek to tell the whole story: I’m about to surf over to the Cranky Liberal and see if he has posted on this. I’m sure he has. While he can and often is a reasonable argument presenter, I’ll wager first that he has not put the full context in his post, and second that he has not linked to a full transcript. He likely will leave out the words “That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do” and the final quote “So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky. “ These quotes demonstrate Bill’s own position – that such attempts to connect abortion to GNP or crime are impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible, and out in left field.
My comment will have the results.

What’s the real issue? Only liberals are allowed to discuss race. How silly. The black population has a higher crime rate – it also has a higher rate of babies born to single parents and the highest abortion rate. Why conservatives don’t publicly point these out as problems and what the solutions are – compared to the welfare state that doesn’t work and has made the problems worse – is evident in this episode.