My Take On Bill Bennett

I don't like doing this, but:

in·fer·ence

1 a the act of passing from one proposition, statement, or judgment
considered as true to another whose truth is believed to follow from
that of the former

im·ply

2 : to involve or indicate by inference, association, or necessary
consequence rather than by direct statement

When I heard Bill Bennet's comments, I heard them in full context.

My take on the matter was to think that if all Black babies were
aborted, some fraction of those Black babies would turn to crime. I
never assumed the statement meant ALL Black babies would become
criminals. And, statistically speaking, I'm right. In fact, most won't be criminals. But for those that would turn to crime, since they wouldn't be around, the crime rate would have to go down.

The same applies if Bennett used whites instead of Blacks or if he said male babies only or if he said if we somehow removed all males between the age of 15-30.

In looking at the responses to Bennett's remarks, there seems to be a
strong thought that states Bennett meant all Black babies aborted
would have been criminals. No where do I see that in Bennett's remarks.

However, going further, it seems to me that Bennett's comments are not what's making the racists feel comfort, it's the replies that confirm the idea that most Blacks are criminals.

Maybe I've missed it, but the fact that most Blacks are NOT criminals, is being lost, to me, with the knee jerk reactions.

That's what is giving comfort to the racists.

Comments

[Temple3]

Yeah, you missed it.

[Sirc_Valence]

I think that you fall into a camp of not so loonie-libs, if you don't mind this neo-con to use the language here.

I appreciate your moderation and open-minded approach here. Bill didn't imply that most Blacks are criminals, but included in his statement was the implication that a disproportionate number of Blacks are. This is not false, I think that from an objective perspective it leaves an opening for a cultural examination.

You are no more responsible for what a bigot does with the truth than Mr. Bennett is.

Anyway, he was making the reductio ad absurdom argument to show a caller on his show that an argument which the caller thought was a good one, really wasn't.

A caller was trying to base the argument against abortion on practicality rather than on morality, thinking that it would impress the left enough to change its mind about the deliberate destruction of an innocent, totally dependent, and helpless human being in its mothers womb. The suggestion was made to Mr. Bennett that if it wasn't for the deliberate destruction of future Americans, the Social Security system wouldn't in as bad a shape as it is.

People have to ask: what is Mr. Bennett really saying and commited to which causes the left to slander and to create such malignant hysteria about him? This might help people understand where the malice and or ignorance (and the two things often compliment one another) is really coming from.

As far as the President and other people reacting to reports about Bennett's alleged plan to abort Black babies (and who is really most responsible for this actually going on!?), I can't really blame them very much if that is the way that libs in the media distorted Mr. Bennett's actual point.

Did he lie? I know that you would not say so after reading your blog post. All he did was point out what selfishness and materialism leads to.

Anyone with doubts right now should purchase the September 28, 2005 tapes or cd of that show from to find out for themselves. Go ahead and check out the station guide to see what stations sell audio archives of his Morning in America program.

[cnulan]

Full context would take into consideration Bennett's role as a leader and architect of America's War on Black Men

Once the paper trail from this phase of his career is admitted into evidence, then we begin working with a properly contextualized ground on which to assess the meaning of his reflexive illustration.

As an academic, with full access to the data, Bennett is certainly equipped to know better than to pose such a specious linkage. However, as a hypocritical founding architect of the most damaging and hardline aspects of the War on Black Men it would be foolishly naive to expect him to express himself otherwise.

Bennett is a racist of the first order who has made a career off of twisting the truth to suit his ends - one of which has been maximum havoc and damage in the black community.

[Sirc_Valence]

Yes, more people are being locked up for longer periods. That's the reason that the crime rate has gone down and no, the problem is not the laws themselves as tempting as it may be for you to say so. There is something more worth considering than shifting numbers and objects that depend on our choices. Had our laws been as relaxed as in times past we would see an explosion of crime like you wouldn't believe.
To illustrate the point:
"In 196o, for every 1,ooo violent crime arrests, 299 arrestees were eventually imprisoned. But by 197o that number had fallen to 17o.* ...From 196o to 197o, violent crime rates rose 126 percent. In the next decade, they jumped another 64 percent."
The cultural and social disfunction has not been alleviated since then, it has in fact become worse in many ways. The rate of single-parent households has actually gone up. Criminality and decadence is not as frowned upon as it was, even then.
"From 198o to 199o, the violent crime rate went up again, but at a slower pace: 23 percent. Then violent crime rates actually began to fall- there was a 6.4% drop between 1990 and 1995.** Why did violent crime rates begin to drop? Because communities all across the U.S. started to roll back the destructive liberal policies of the sixties." In 199o there were 773,919 prisoners, by 1994 there were 1,o53,738 of them. And of course the moral insoucients behind such trends say that we need more of their "medicine" and brand of "progress"; but it is becoming obvious to anyone that escapes the echo chambers of madness that it is poison.
The problem in terms of our current social maladies is that while people have been coming to their senses in terms of policies, the ideological and systematic impetus behind them remains deeply entrenched in academia. The embrace of obscenity, common in criminals, has widely been shared and cultivated by libs. Pretty much, the body has been healing itself, despite what should be the brain. But it cannot survive for very long that way. Solving this problem is going to be a little tricky considering its nature.

--
(Quotes from Ch. 26, The Official Handbook of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy by David Smith)

*U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 199o, NCJ-129198
**U.S.D.o.J., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 1994, NCJ-151654

[Sirc_Valence]

It's a pretty thin book. You might want to pick it up at the library just to read the chapter (just six pagers)that I cited because there is a fuller reply there which would help make this particular exchange much more efficient for both of us.

[Cobb]

Oh. So that's it? The reason for all the hateration on Bennett is because of all the lives he destroyed in the War on Some Drugs? Now it's clear.

Pshaw. So Let's imagine that the Revolution was going to take place but Bennett jailed the leadership. Has African America been able to bounce back? Has the message been lost or is everbody still down for the struggle we were all about in Bennett's day?

I'm taking this one to the top.

[cnulan]

There is something more worth considering than shifting numbers and objects that depend on our choices.

Nice try SV. Does straw often help you accomplish your rhetorical objectives?

There are indeed a number of things more worth considering than the racist straw of choices presented as you have done here without due regard for the context of a racially gerrymandered criminal justice system;

Fatal error numero uno is the minimal/non-existent drug law enforcement among whites among whom the overwhelming majority of drug crimes occur.

You might want to pick it up at the library just to read the chapter

and no SV, I have no interest in this pamphlet because unless it obviates the paradoxical (nice way of saying unequal and racist) enforcement of the drug laws, it only serves to support erroneous position. I suspect from the way you attempted to control the scope of the discussion that we occupy different and irreconcilable realities.

down the list from the first cause we have the corollary problem spaces;

Blacks own no poppy or coca fields.

Blacks own none of the ships, planes, and tractor trailers that support the wholesale importation and distribution.

Blacks own and control none of the banks that launder the massive coin and currency flows arising from narcotics trade.

Blacks own and control none of the media which glorifies and propagandizes the narcotraficante lifestyle.

Blacks are not the primary consumers of the contraband materials.

Blacks control none of the legislative power required to eliminate these jim crow laws.

Blacks control none of the laws required to control gun proliferation and we all know where the overwhelming majority of crime guns come from.

Blacks manufacture no guns or bullets.

Which aspect of white America's racist socio-ecological assault on young black men and the well-being of the community which depends on the seignurial viability of young black men would you like to take on first SV?

William Bennett is an architect of the racist socioecological assault on young black men. What is more interesting by far is the question of motive underlying his malfeasance. The recent slip of the lip was revelatory as concerns motive.

[cnulan]

in response to a comparable paring down of the purpose of the drug laws set forth at P6;

"There are no acceptable alternatives to legislative correction of this grotesque, racist, and irrational domestic war on black men. every other possible claim presented by the American system is rendered moot by this highly damaging vestige of jim crow which clearly discloses the seignurial nature of the American social ecology."

ourstorian put it in a way that bears repeating;

The jim crow application of drug laws makes them highly useful and lucrative tools for maintaining the status quo of white supremacy. Not only do they serve as pretexts for the mad dog policing of black communities, they also provide a vital revenue stream for cops, judges, lawyers, and the contractors who build and maintain the prison industrial complex. Even the phone companies have climbed on board, charging usurious rates for long distance calls from prisons, rates prisoners and their families can ill-afford. This operates in concert with the practice of housing black inmates in rural prisons where they provide jobs and incomes for white folks and contribute to the census data used to calculate and apportion Congressional representation. Thus black and Latino felons, who have been excised from voter roles, form a critical segment in the population of these rural voting districts. This practice in some ways mimics the clause established in the U.S. Constitution authorizing the use of the formula that a black slave constituted 3/5 of a human being for the purpose of determining proportional representation in slave-holding states. As you can imagine, many of the "representatives" from these voting districts go to Washington and vote against the interests of black folks in general, and for the continuation of the policies that foster and maintain the ghetto-prison pipeline. Their jobs depend on it.

[cnulan]

racism by some other name?

Many of Mr. Bennett’s supporters have made the argument that while Bennett never argued for eliminating African-Americans, his assertion that less blacks would mean less crime was essentially correct. “Some identifiable groups, considered as a group, commit crime at a rate that is higher than the national rate,” former federal prosecutor and present columnist Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review Online. “Blacks are such a group. That is simply a fact. … The rate being high, it is an unavoidable mathematical reality that if the number of blacks, or of any group whose rate outstripped the national rate, were reduced or eliminated from the national computation, the national rate would go down.”

But the truth of that conclusion is dependent on Mr. McCarthy’s original premise that “some groups commit crime” at a higher rate, and that “blacks are such a group.” That is not a necessarily provable fact. What we do know is that some groups are caught and prosecuted for crime at a higher rate, and that African-Americans are certainly such a group. But to believe that the actual commission of crime in America would go down with the elimination of African-Americans is to believe, for example, that the drug cartels, seeing the elimination of their black b-boy dealers on America’s inner city street corners, would turn in their six-guns to the bartender and start hoeing spuds, as the cattleman Rufus Ryker once facetiously suggested to the gunfighter Shane. More likely, they would simply find other methods of dealership.

But Mr. Bennett’s statement was wrong in another sense; wrong in the sense that it should not have been said, because it allows the subject of black genocide as a way to solve America’s problems to be raised as a topic of discussion. That Mr. Bennett does not believe in such a practice, or that he said immediately afterwards that such a program of black genocide would be “impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible” is not nearly enough. Some things have no business being said by people considered to be “responsible.”

[Sirc_Valence]

I think that your "reality" suffers from a literally deadly moral relativism. There is just no basis for you to say that "William Bennett is an architect of the racist socioecological assault on young black men."
You apparently didn't understand my statement that "There is something more worth considering than shifting numbers and objects that depend on our choices" allthough you quoted it at the top of your reply to me!
Otherwise you wouldn't have said "Blacks own no poppy or coca fields..." and so on.
B.E.T. said that Black households watch 50% more TV than Whites, and its one of the few television networks that caters mainly to a Black audience. Did you think that you were doing something other than going around in circles rhetorically, here?
Let me get you in on a little secret that we Conservatives like to hide from everyone, as it seems. No one (in their right mind) forces or would encourage Black people, or whatever group of people you want to talk about, to watch TV and Bill Bennett didn't use his socioecological influence to destroy the Black home. You're blaming the wrong people here if you want to blame anyone besides those responsible for their own actions. If you think Mr. Bennett walks around going "hey, look at that guy with black skin, I want to put him in jail" then think again, pally. The man is more of an individualist and proponent of the nuclear family than a race-ist or Darwinistic social engineer (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, Nazi in short, means National Socialist German Workers Party, btw).
You argue, through ourstorian, that Blacks are "overpoliced" (I assume that's your term for the racist abuse of authority) in the past, by White people with unacceptable proclivities. But that argument can only be made when one is hellbent on the denial that Black people can have unacceptable proclivities as a group, as we openly consider and admit with Whites.
Insert a positive element in this debate, I have to ask, would you say that Black sports stars are "overabundant" at the top echelons of the athletic world? Wasn't there a period when Boxing champions tended to be Italian and Irish? Mexicans, Puertoricans, Ghanese, Koreans, Indians. Anyone can do it. That there are clusters of specialties that can be found dependent on some cultural characteristics and features and how those can change is a given. To note them is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when done in an instructive manner.
"But the truth of that conclusion is dependent on Mr. McCarthy’s original premise that 'some groups commit crime' at a higher rate, and that 'blacks are such a group.'"-prometheus6
I'll point out that prometheus6 doesn't respond to McCarthy's statement, at least not in your quote, that "our public discourse on [the disproportionate crime rates here], even among prominent African Americans, has not been to dispute the numbers but to argue over the causes of the high rate" in the subsequent supportive sentence.
This bears your consideration because as Andrew McCarthy is a public figure who is putting his name on the line, I don't know if many people can say who this dude, prometheus6, is. Apparently the piker couldn't meet the burden of proof challenge that is required when one attempts to contradict someone that is out of their league in a convincing and sound way.
I think that a problem with people, all of us, is that when someone tells us that we are wrong, we think that they are telling us that we are idiots. Of course, sometimes they are, because we are.

[cnulan]

I think that your "reality" suffers from a literally deadly moral relativism.

It's rather certain that yours is mired in solipsistically ignorant chauvinism. Since you're on about the squishy neologism "moral" that you conservatives are so fond of touting, let's get under the hood to explore more deeply the ethological basis of precisely what it is that you're so hell bent on morally conserving, shall we?

I'm disregarding the teevee and nazi straw as even less relevant to the central contention that Bennett is an arch-racist than your previous crime statistics quoted absent consideration of the normalizing context of institutionally lopsided law enforcement.

As I equate so-called American conservatism with white-identity politics, it has been incumbent on me to flesh out my thesis in terms that you will no doubt find unfamiliar, yet, which describe the nature of racist behaviour in a very ethologically satisfying and onto way. Most recently, I undertook just such an exercise over at P6, with fairly satisfying results.

The entirety of the American culture war is about maintenance of white seignurial privilege and primacy.., if one were to write a book about it, a good working title might be, Who's Ya Daddy?" Progressive Patriarchy in the Fin d'Siecle American Republic Bennett is an exemplary professional culture warrior who has taken a lifelong stance that I find morally repugnant.

Since I don't view self-medication as an unacceptable proclivity, and since you are as surely incapable of providing a rational and econometrically sound argument in support of the violently enforced and racially motivated social policy prohibiting the same, there's probably no point in pursuing that line of discourse either. Your opinion that "just say no" has some ontological merit is simply ridiculous on the face of it.

Your sycophantic allegiance to McCarthy as personage of note, while touching in a dittohead lemming sort of way, is yet again more straw blown in place of a counterargument. I encourage you to take that same gamma-male disdain you've expressed hereabouts over to P6 and see how long you can hold your own on any of his threads. One of your orininalist conservative coreligionists has been getting his clock cleaned over there for some time now and could surely use the moral support.

Finally, I haven't told you that you're wrong, rather, I've pointed out all the things you've failed to consider in your apologetics for William Bennett. You inability to consider them is indicative of nothing more than chauvinistic self-interest on your part. Of course you'll excuse me, a black man, for not sharing your particular brand of chauvinistic proclivity - it's simply not in my best interest seignurially defined to do so.