Bennett under fire for remarks on blacks, crime

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I can’t imagine that William Bennett would say this.

He is a Catholic and I give him more credit than the article gives.
Besides, it’s coming from CNN.
 
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Edwin1961:
I can’t imagine that William Bennett would say this.

He is a Catholic and I give him more credit than the article gives.
Besides, it’s coming from CNN.
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So are you saying that you don’t believe he said this? I think you can get sound clips on the internet of those exact words. De’ Nile ain’t just a river in Egypt.
 
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StratusRose:
So are you saying that you don’t believe he said this? I think you can get sound clips on the internet of those exact words. De’ Nile ain’t just a river in Egypt.
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Here WIlliam Bennett’s site:
bennettmornings.com/

I DO NOT trust the liberal media. I go to The Source of the person than rely on those who tend to bend the truth. The complete transcript of the program is on Bennett’s site. Thank you.
 
I heard the original statement and it was said in response to a callers ridiculous statement about abortion. Bennett called it reprehensible and not a good analogy. It had to do with abortion. Then Bennett said that you couldn’t for instance say that you could lower crime rates in the same way.

OK, when Bill first said it I cringed because I knew his comment would be taken out of context and blown up. I knew it immediately. I have seen this happen before about comments. I was not surprised to see him on Hannity and Colmes defending himself.

He is discussing it as we speak on his show that I do listen to . To me it is another example of finding a minute speck of trouble and blowing it up, magnifying it. They hate Bill Bennett because he represents a Catholic view. He does not support abortion or premarital sex. He wants better education. He supports vouchers. He wants better education for poor people. He supports all the home schoolers and he has written a curiculuum for them.

They are speaking to hear themselves quoted. They would love to have him off the air because he is taking over the markets in many cities. He recently arrived in the Chicago market and I switched to listen to him.

Was the statement awkward at best, YES. Was it the wrong way to go with the converstaion? YES. Was is racially triggered, NO. Are the critics being fair? NO.
 
Fitz,
THANK YOU for seeing the truth in what is going on here. You just made my point about the Liberal Media and how words are being bent out of shape.
People hear what they want to hear and disregard everything else.

So I supposed that analogy is too complex for the media…they only want statements and you aren’t allowed to back them up or expand on them UNLESS the media agrees with you.

I’m listening to Bill’s progam as I type this.

Fitz, thank you!
 
It as usual taken out of context, did he use the wrong choice of words maybe. But unfortunately the media picks up a pharse or two and run with it.
 
This is further proof why the Liberal meda must be eliminated through not listening or reading their product. If nobody listens or reads it, they will have to go out of business.

Yes, they have a right to their opinion (as long as it is not false or slanderous), but I have the right to not listen to it (which they do not believe I have).

PF
 
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StratusRose:
Ok, Ok, maybe you guys are right. :rolleyes:
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StratusRose, I really believe it is more of a hatred about the Bill Bennetts of this world (moral police as they call the right) than it is about the original comment. I think the world of Bill Bennett and his ideals (Catholic views on everything). I am a Catholic first and I really do consider myself an independent in the political sense. I will vote Democrat when they start to vote life.

You were right to post the article and the link. You beat me too it. We need to be discussing these things. Catholics get divided by party and they should not when it comes to goofy things like this. We should stick together.
 
Here’s the original quote:
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. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.
Here’s Bennett’s explanation on the Hannity & Colmes show:

BENNETT: Sure. 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.

I said, however, if you were to practice that, widespread abortion in the black community or any other community, it would be ridiculous, impossible, and I appreciate you putting it on the screen, morally reprehensible. So I think morally reprehensible, when that is included in the quote makes it perfectly clear what my position is. A number of the people whom you have cited as condemning me have not made the inclusion of that remark, and so they make it seem, Alan, as if I am supporting such a monstrous idea, which of course I don’t.
The irony to me is that so many of these people want to hang Bill Bennett out to dry for an idea that he is clearly against, while they enthusiastically support Planned Parenthood, whose founder, Margaret Sanger, made similar comments and REALLY DID MEAN THEM!

Here’s Sanger in her own words:
It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stoop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them.

Sources:
yglesias.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/29/16450/9195
bennettmornings.com/agnosticchart?charttype=minichart&chartID=11&formatID=1&size=3&useMiniChartID=true&destinationpage=/pg/jsp/general/featured.jsp#0
blackgenocide.org/sanger.html
all.org/stopp/sanger.htm
 
Fitz
Thank you I listen to the program too. He mentioned the stats in the very popular book Freakanomics. This is one of their stats that abortion has lowered the crime rate. Which is offensive but the authors are leftist so they are not criticized.
 
Rush Lindbaugh had some interesting comments about it today. He said that his old comment (considered racist about football quarterback) was played today due to the discussion about Bennett’s comment. He says it is choreographed and timed to make the public view people on the right as racist. He mentioed again that they even tried to make Roberts look racist before the vote on his seat on the Supreme Court.

I think as Catholics we have to be very leary of the media . All people should be, but we know they don’t like religion- and the Catholic religion is one they like the least.
 
The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime
JOHN J. DONOHUE III
Yale Law School; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
STEVEN D. LEVITT
University of Chicago; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); American Bar Foundation
**Abstract: **
We offer evidence that legalized abortion has contributed significantly to recent crime reductions. Crime began to fall roughly 18 years after abortion legalization. The 5 states that allowed abortion in 1970 experienced declines earlier than the rest of the nation, which legalized in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. States with high abortion rates in the 1970s and 1980s experienced greater crime reductions in the 1990s. In high abortion states, only arrests of those born after abortion legalization fall relative to low abortion states. Legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=174508
Are abortion rates and crime rates linked?
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Economist Steven Levitt of Stanford Law School and co-author John Donhue III of the University of Chicago have circulated an unpublished report called “Legalized Abortion and Crime.” It suggests that the legalization of abortion might have indirectly caused the lowering of crime rates which have been observed during the 1970’s. Their reasoning was that abortions prevented the birth of many people who would have been born into poverty and thus be more likely to commit crimes. They suggest that abortion could be responsible for about half of the drop in crime rates since 1991. Levitt acknowledges that this conclusion is mainly “conjecture” and that it could “never be proven to the degree of certainty that a scientist might demand.” Their data showed that those states that legalized abortion prior to 1973 had their crime rates drop sooner than other states. States with very high rates of abortion after 1973 tended to “have particularly high drops in crime during the 1990’s.”
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religioustolerance.org/abo_fact1.htm
 
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Edwin1961:
I can’t imagine that William Bennett would say this.

He is a Catholic and I give him more credit than the article gives.
Besides, it’s coming from CNN.
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The words he said were taken out of context. He was saying the same thing that Economist Steven Levitt of Stanford Law School and others have said. Poverty and crime are related. Therefore, the more abortions in poverty areas, the less crime there will be.

What has the media been focusing on in the past month? Answer: poverty in New Orleans and in other cities is connected to race - African Americans are stuck in poverty and it is Bush’s fault… blah, blah, blah. But if you go to the core of what they are saying is that poverty and race (African American) are connected.

So you take what liberals are saying about poverty and race and poverty and abortion, you get the conclusion that the more babies African-Americans abort, the less crime there will be.

Which is a moot point and does not even need to be debated one way or the other, because abortion is the killing of a innocent human being, a child. If liberals want to reduce poverty another way, go after gansta rap and the sick sub-culture of inner cities that many poor people (predominately minorities) are forced to live in. Don’t go after their children and try to justify killing them.
Liberals have been justifying the slaughter of millions of minority babies and Bill Bennett has been defending those same babies. Bill Bennett repeats one of their sick reasoning and he is attacked, not the ones who embraced it!!!

Conclusion: Media Bias.
 
From the Desk of William J. Bennett

September 30, 2005

"On Wednesday, a caller to my radio show proposed the idea that one good argument for the pro-life position would be that if we didn’t have abortions, Social Security would be solvent. I stated my doubts about such a thesis, as well as my opposition to such a form of argument (the audio of the call is available at my Website: bennettmornings.com).

"I then stated that such extrapolations of this argument can cut both ways, and cited the current bestseller, Freakonomics, which discusses the authors’ thesis that abortion reduces crime.

"Then, putting my philosophy professor’s hat on, I went on to reveal the limitations of such arguments by showing the absurdity in another such argument, along the same lines. I entertained what law school professors call ‘the Socratic method’ and what I would hope good social science professors still use in their seminars. In so doing, I suggested a hypothetical analogy while at the same time saying the proposition I was using about blacks and abortion was ‘impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible,’ just to ensure those who would have any doubt about what they were hearing, or for those who tuned in to the middle of the conversation.

"The issues of crime and race have been on many people’s minds, and tongues, for the past month or so–in light of the situation in New Orleans; and the issues of race, crime, and abortion are well aired and ventilated in articles, the academy, the think tank community, and public policy. Indeed the whole issue of crime and race is not new in social science, nor popular literature. One of the authors of Freakonomics, himself, had an extended exchange on the discussion of these issues on the Internet some years back–which was also much debated in the think tank community in Washington.

"A thought experiment about public policy, on national radio, should not have received the condemnations it has. Anyone paying attention to this debate should be offended by those who have selectively quoted me, distorted my meaning, and taken out of context the dialogue I engaged in this week. Such distortions from ‘leaders’ of organizations and parties is a disgrace not only to the organizations and institutions they serve, but to the First Amendment.

“In sum, let me reiterate what I had hoped my long career had already established: that I renounce all forms of bigotry–and that my record in trying to provide opportunities for, as well as save the lives of, minorities in this country stands up just fine.”

Source: corner.nationalreview.com/05_09_25_corner-archive.asp#078156
 
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Zooey:
The very fact that those words would come out of somebody’s mouth!!!http://bestsmileys.com/angry2/3.gifI don’t care what point he was trying to make, the very fact that he would use this kind of language, says to me that he has :nope: no decency…
How could anyone even suggest that…What does that say about him ??? http://bestsmileys.com/angry2/10.gif
Sickening!!!http://bestsmileys.com/angry2/3.gif

I’m sorry, but the man needs to apologize. Big time.
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Take it easy, Zooey. His words WERE taken out of context. You say he has no decency, yet you do not know the man. Are you saying that you can judge a man’s heart? I thought only God had that power. Who gave you the right to do this?
Your insistence that he apologize for his attempt to make a point based on a caller’s remarks, vis-a-vis a book called “Freakonomics” by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner, is insane. At the end of his comments, he added that this scenario would be morally reprehensible. It was a HYPOTHESIS.
It’s people like you, people who say that some words can never be used - even to make a valid point - who are the ones who need to apologize - to the rest of us.

“Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” - St. Jerome
 
Mot Juste:
"Then, putting my philosophy professor’s hat on, I went on to reveal the limitations of such arguments by showing the absurdity in another such argument, along the same lines. I entertained what law school professors call ‘the Socratic method’
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I think the problem is that Bill Bennett was engaged in a live on-air thought experiment - in other words, he was letting his mouth run while his brain worked. This is fine in a class-room or other academic setting. But live radio is far from being an ivory tower.

The problem with his comment is that it puts forward the idea that reducing the black population will reduce crime. This is genocide as a means to a public goal.

He immediately qualified his comment by saying it was immoral. But some of his listeners are going to seize upon the equation of blacks=crime, and feel justified with a certain amount of white supremacy because a respected national figure said it.

Mr. Bennett should have disavowed his analogy. But he tried to defend it in further interviews, such as with ABC News:
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.
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abcnews.go.com/WNT/Politics/story?id=1171385&page=1

A far safer comparison would have been to mention the dropping crime rate in the 1980s, which occurred because the Baby Boom had aged to the point where the criminals stopped committing cirmes.

And if he was really smart, he would have noted that black crime rates are tied to the disproportionate amount of poverty experienced by African-Americans. Rather than talking about increasing abortions - an immoral position - he could have talked about helping African-Americans rise out of poverty, which would reduce the crime rate.

Bill Bennett shouldn’t have circled the wagons. He should have made peace.
 
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StratusRose:
So are you saying that you don’t believe he said this? I think you can get sound clips on the internet of those exact words. De’ Nile ain’t just a river in Egypt.
Click to expand...
He didn’t say this at all. I have heard the transcript and it is one sentence out of an entire discussion in which he was saying that making the hypothesis that abortion reduces crime is ridiculous and dangerous.

The Left is really playing with fire here. They are so desperate for a wedge issue that they have pulled out the race card BIG TIME, as evidenced during the Katrina aftermath and continuing on to the present, and are using it to hammer the right. On the Saturday after Katrina, the left talking points were all over the airwaves that the black people were treated differently because of their pigmentation. While the left may need an issue to sink its ugly teeth into, this one will bite them back. I don’t think that there is anyone who wants to turn black against white but that is what is happening.

The truth is that you can’t mention a person’s color, as a descriptor or in any other way, without being labelled a racist. Newspapers have been taken to task for publishing the desciption of an alleged assailant and mentioning (gasp) that he is black. Yet, no such response when they do the same to a white person. After all, a person’s race is an important part of a description and black IS NOT A DIRTY WORD!

We have come to a point in time where no one really gives a rat’s behind what color a person is, so long as his heart is good. Why on Earth does the left want to open old wounds, except to further their own agenda which is to raise questions about the credibility of Bush and the conservative movement. Unfortunately for them, the hard figures (e.g., money spent on poverty programs) will show them to be strictly self-serving in using this issue. Why? Because they don’t have any real issues or a real agenda to offer as we saw in the recent election cycle.

What a disgusting and pathetic display.
 
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