Morons
In one of my last posts, I borrowed some quotes from www.ihatepatrobertson.com and now I’m going to do the same with www.morons.org
It’s kind of hard to imagine this level of stupidity, but I guess it’s possible. I’m not going to make comments about it; I don’t think it’s necessary.
You might remember William "Bill" Bennett from such hits as "The Book of Virtues" and "I lost $8 million to high-stakes gambling." Now he's jumped on the black baby bandwagon and told his neo-conservative radio audience that aborting all the black babies would reduce crime.
Here's the transcript of exactly what he said, lest anyone accuse us of taking his words out of context:
One of the arguments in this book "Freakonomics" they make is that the declining crime rate -- you know they deal with this hypothesis-- that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. [Caller: well I don't think that statistic is accurate.] Well I don't think it is either because first of all there's just too much that you don't know. But I do know that it's true that 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. Now that would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.
The implication here is of course that black people by their very nature are more likely to commit crimes than others: Bennett singled out black babies to the exclusion of other races, ethnicities, and characteristics and suggested that removing them from the picture would reduce crime.
Granted, if you wanted to reduce crime dramatically, you could abort every baby in the country. This would necessarily reduce crime by reducing the population. (Ignoring for a moment immigration and reproduction by budding.) But note that Bennett didn't say that; he specifically talked about black babies, to the exclusion of all others.
He also didn't attribute this theory to Freakonomics (it does not make a race-based argument about abortion and crime). His words were, "But I do know that it's true..." Not "Freakonomics posits that..." but "I do know that it's true." He is stating this as his personal belief. He 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.
And this guy used to be the US Secretary of Education.
It’s kind of hard to imagine this level of stupidity, but I guess it’s possible. I’m not going to make comments about it; I don’t think it’s necessary.
You might remember William "Bill" Bennett from such hits as "The Book of Virtues" and "I lost $8 million to high-stakes gambling." Now he's jumped on the black baby bandwagon and told his neo-conservative radio audience that aborting all the black babies would reduce crime.
Here's the transcript of exactly what he said, lest anyone accuse us of taking his words out of context:
One of the arguments in this book "Freakonomics" they make is that the declining crime rate -- you know they deal with this hypothesis-- that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. [Caller: well I don't think that statistic is accurate.] Well I don't think it is either because first of all there's just too much that you don't know. But I do know that it's true that 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. Now that would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.
The implication here is of course that black people by their very nature are more likely to commit crimes than others: Bennett singled out black babies to the exclusion of other races, ethnicities, and characteristics and suggested that removing them from the picture would reduce crime.
Granted, if you wanted to reduce crime dramatically, you could abort every baby in the country. This would necessarily reduce crime by reducing the population. (Ignoring for a moment immigration and reproduction by budding.) But note that Bennett didn't say that; he specifically talked about black babies, to the exclusion of all others.
He also didn't attribute this theory to Freakonomics (it does not make a race-based argument about abortion and crime). His words were, "But I do know that it's true..." Not "Freakonomics posits that..." but "I do know that it's true." He is stating this as his personal belief. He 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.
And this guy used to be the US Secretary of Education.
posted by Joe at 1:08 AM
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