Well, yes, it's heartwarming to see liberals recoil in horror from the notion of aborting babies. Nevertheless Bill Bennett did not say he wants to abort black children--he was refuting a utilitarian argument that favors abortion.
Here's what happened:
"Bennett is on the hot seat for remarks uttered Wednesday during his radio show, 'Morning in America,' where he was arguing against some of the more extreme justifications for abortion, calling them 'ridiculous and morally reprehensible.'
"Offering an example, Bennett said:
"'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 the crime rate has dropped because of legal abortion is the thesis put forward in a bestselling new book, "Freakonomics." Beliefnet had a story on abortion and the crime rate as propounded in the book. Many (mostly liberals) seem to have embraced what might be called the kill-them-before-they-kill-us school of thought to justify abortion. Bill Bennett was refuting this idea.
The argument about falling crime rates and legal abortion--not Bill Bennett--is tacitly but inherently racist. Black males make up a disproportionate segment of the prison population. Guess who they're talking about aborting. A Catholic who opposes abortion, Bennett was trying to show how morally reprehensible the Freakonomics argument is--and, apparently, he succeeded.
But, as Jonah Goldberg points out, this is a manufactured scandal:
"Anyway, as you might suspect, I think this is a silly, manufactured, attack on Bennett. Maybe he could have phrased it differently, but the point he made is rational and true and his moral condemnation of the suggestion was appropriate. To me, this is very similar to the whole 'evacuees' vs. 'refugees' nonsense after Katrina. People are trying to be offended rather looking at what he said, how he said and -- most of all -- the context in which he said it. I have no problem if people want to dislike Bennett or disagree with him on this or anything else, but this brouhaha is bottled outrage and nothing more."
Just for the record, we don't know if the Freakonomics theory is correct--there are so many factors that feed into rising or falling crime rates. But if it is correct, if it were proven beyond a shadow of doubt, it would still have no moral weight.
National Review's The Corner is the hot spot for discussions of the Bennett scandale.
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