Yeah, Right, Whatever

By now, most people have heard that Bill Bennett (former Drug Czar and Secretary of Education, founder of the K12 homeschool system, and, yes, person with a gambling problem) said something that the MSM jumped on (after a Soros-funded hack site jumped on it). Here's the quote from his radio show:

"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. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky," said Bennett.

Let's put this into context, first. He was discussing the book Freakonomics on his radio show. One of several premises in the book is that legalized abortion, in part, has contributed to the decline in the crime rate in the US. Here is his explanation of what happened on Wednesday's show. In part:

"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.

Makes sense to me. Mr. Bennett is not racist. He was following in the footsteps of his friend, Rush Limbaugh, by "demonstrating absurdity by being absurd." He said, in the quote, that it was "impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible". I guess they missed that part.

I hate to do this, but... I'm going to, anyway. And I'll probably get trolled for it. Oh, well.

I have long been a believer that the higher crime stats within the black community are a direct correlation to the Welfare State. Once Uncle Sam stepped in to take care of the women and children (there is a reason it's called WIC, you know), the status of men within the poor community (African American, Caucasian, whatever) dropped substantially. They became nothing more than sperm donors. Man's God-given urge to provide and protect, traditional views of masculinity, are seen as worthless. If a man stepped up to the plate and married the woman he loved, then she could not get as much (if any) state aid. So... shack up... or just get her pregnant. Don't have a good job- you can get more money from the government. But there remains that machismo, that need to prove that he is a man. Because of the chain of broken families and few if any positive male role models, young poor men turn to other ways of expressing their masculinity- crime, gangs, etc. This, unfortunately, is most evident within poor African American communities in the United States.

You need stats? I have stats.

# Lifetime chances of a person going to prison are higher for
-- men (11.3%) than for women (1.8%)
-- blacks (18.6%) and Hispanics (10%) than for whites (3.4%)
# Based on current rates of first incarceration, an estimated 32% of black males will enter State or Federal prison during their lifetime, compared to 17% of Hispanic males and 5.9% of white males.
# 64% of prison inmates belonged to racial or ethnic minorities in 2001.
#An estimated 57% of inmates were under age 35 in 2001.
# In 2000, African Americans represented ~13% of the US population.

And from this site, we have this:

63% of abortion patients are white, however, black women are more than 3 times as likely to have an abortion, and Hispanic women are 2.5 times as likely.

And:

Serious violent crime has seen a steady decrease.

SO... by tossing those stats into a blender, we come up with a hypothesis- the number of violent crimes has decreased, perhaps in part by the number of abortions performed in the US (the premise put forth in the book). Based on this information, we could in theory extrapolate that, using Bennett's comment, by reducing (by abortion) or even eliminating a subset of the population which has a higher than average percentage of criminal activity within the subset, you could have reduced the number of prisoners in the system by 15-30%. (But, as HDD is known to say, "in theory, communism works".) Would it work, technically, yes. Am I in favor of it? No. Not just no. Hell no. I don't support abortion or racism, anymore than Mr. Bennett does.

When a liberal compares the President to Hitler or Pol Pot or Bull Connor, you're not supposed to question their motives. (Rangle claims that he didn't mean to imply that W is racist, but that his actions brought attention to a race problem in the same way that Bull Connor's did back in his time... yeah.... right... ) When a conservative makes a comment that he admits, within the comment, is morally reprehensible, it's more than acceptable to demand retractions and apologies and everything else.

Getting rid of the Welfare State, demanding quality education (or the vouchures to do it yourself) and expecting great things from your children is how you will lower the crime rate. Genocide of a part of our population won't do it, even if statistics says it might.