Get Bennett Gambling Again!

Nick Gillespie | September 30, 2005

Well, if the fancy lads at Slate think it's tough to talk about race and hiring policies at the nation's most prestigious newspapers, they ought to step into the shoes of professional outrageur and self-crowned "values czar" (tsar?) Bill Bennett.

The Book of Virtues * author has started a flap by yapping on his "Morning in America" radio show thusly:

"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."

More on that here.

Bennett, who says he was extrapolating from an argument in the bestselling book Freakonomics, tells ABC News:

"There's no question this is on our minds," Bennett said. "What I do on our show is talk about things that people are thinking...we don't hesitate to talk about things that are touchy."

Bennett said, "I'm sorry if people are hurt, I really am. But we can't say this is an area of American life (and) public policy that we're not allowed to talk about--race and crime."

For interesting rebuttals to Freakonomics' contention that more abortions mean fewer crimes, go here and here.

In the ABC News story, written by Jake Tapper, NY Postman, occasional Reasonite, and black Republican Robert A. George says that he doesn't think Bennett meant the comments to be racist but he agrees that such comments play into the stereotype that the GOP really doesn't like blacks: "It seems to me someone with Bennett's intelligence...should know better the impact of his words and sort of thinking these things through before he speaks." Which certainly sounds about right.

George expands on the issue at his Ragged Thots blog here.

* Update: fixed mispelling of Bennett's big book.

More update: Brad DeLong makes a defense of Bennett:

Bill Bennett is a hypocrite, a loathsome fungus on the tree of American politics, a man who has worked unceasingly to make America a worse place--when he's not publishing the work of others under his own name, or rolling the dice at Las Vegas while claiming that America's poor would be rich if only they had the righteousness and moral fiber than he does.

But Bill Bennett is not afflicted with genocidal fantasies about ethnically cleansing African-Americans. The claim that he is is completely, totally wrong.

Whole thing here.

Comments

|9.30.05 @ 11:47AM|#

Nice post, Nick. But didn't Bill write The Book of Virtues? Without researching, I think that's right, but you have The Book of Values. It doesn't matter since Bennett has neither.

|9.30.05 @ 11:50AM|#

Honey, I feel bad about the impact of calling you a wh*re b*tch who's taken more c*ck than Frank Purdue.

If I could take back the impact of those words, I would. I'm sorry that you reacted the way you did.

All better?

(Hint, Captain Apologist: it isn't "the impact of his words" that's the problem. It's his words.)

|9.30.05 @ 11:51AM|#

from "Medical and Social Health Benefits Since Abortion Was Made Legal in the U. S." (Planned Parenthood, December 2004):

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/files/portal/medicalinfo/abortion/fact-abortion-medical-social-benefits.pdf (150 KB PDF file)

The legalization of abortion was a significant
factor in the dramatic drop in crime in the U.S. in
the 1990s.

#Previous research has established that a
strong link exists between an adverse family
environment and future criminal behavior;
that maternal rejection is counted among the
various qualitative aspects of parenting that
provide the most accurate predictors of
juvenile delinquency; and that having been
born of a pregnancy that was unwanted by
one's mother is a circumstance that
increases a person's risk of committing
violent crime (David, et al., 1988; Donohue
& Levitt, 2001).

#At least one study reported that legalized
abortion can account for about half the
observed decline in crime in the U.S. since
1991. Homicide rates have fallen more than
40 percent, and violent crime and property
crime have fallen more than 30 percent.

# The timing of the drop in crime corresponds
to the period in which the first generation of
children born after the legalization of
abortion are reaching what are considered
to be the peak ages of criminal activity (18 -
24 years old). Furthermore, states that
legalized abortion before the rest of the
nation did so were also the first states to
experience decreasing crime rates.

#States with high abortion rates have seen a
greater fall in crime since 1985, even after
taking into account other factors that would
be expected to influence the crime rate.
Furthermore, these declines in crime rates in
high-abortion states are disproportionately
concentrated among those under the age of
25 (Donohue & Levitt, 2001).

In sum, no amount of controversy over abortion can
negate the evidence that American women, men,
children, and families have reaped great benefits to
their physical, mental, and social health from the
U.S. Supreme Court's historic decision in Roe v.
Wade. Any erosion of a woman's right and access
to medically safe, legal abortion jeopardizes the
health of women, their families, and the nation as a
whole

|9.30.05 @ 11:55AM|#

Margaret Sanger - the founder of Planned Parenthood -- was in favor of eugenics.

Planned Parenthood denies this.

A lot of people in the West were, until Hitler gave eugenics a bad name.

|9.30.05 @ 11:56AM|#

The saddest commentary is that a majority of voters are incapable of thinking hypothetically, and that, in turn, inspires slimy politicians like Reid to score some points at Bennett's expense.

Phil|9.30.05 @ 11:57AM|#

You know, it's axiomatic that, if you aborted all the babies of any distinctly identifiable group -- blacks, whites, Irish, left-handed golfers, Firefly fans, etc. -- then the crime rate would, in fact, go down . . . by the exact proportion to which that group's members contribute to the crime rate, plus or minus when accounting for other factors.

That, of course, wasn't what Bennett was saying. He was saying the black people commit all the crime.

|9.30.05 @ 11:57AM|#

Nobody Important, is there a reference to race in that Planned Parenthood reference that I'm not seeing?

|9.30.05 @ 12:03PM|#

Given that (1) blacks commit more violent crime than gun owners (both in absolute numbers and per-capita), and (2) only a knuckle-dragging right-wing neanderthal would think that abortion is immoral, what exactly is so offensive about Bennett's remarks?

|9.30.05 @ 12:03PM|#

Back when Dennis Miller was funny he had a mildly amusing line that went something like: "A moderate Republican is one who calls black people Negroes".

I really don't mind these gamblers, junkies, drunks, gluttons, closet funboys, and serial divorcers saying anything they want. (But do they have to be on every goddamn radio station in the US 24 hours a day?)

It's just the "we're the values and morality guys" bit that grates.

Jeff P.|9.30.05 @ 12:04PM|#

AT least we don't have to worry about the Far Right turning to eugenics, as that would require them to accept at least part of evolution.

|9.30.05 @ 12:06PM|#

You know, it's axiomatic that, if you aborted all the babies of any distinctly identifiable group -- blacks, whites, Irish, left-handed golfers, Firefly fans, etc. -- then the crime rate would, in fact, go down . . .

Comment by: Phil at September 30, 2005 11:57 AM

Wrong. If you abort the fetuses of a group that commits crime below the national average, the crime rate goes up.

|9.30.05 @ 12:08PM|#

Jeff, Jebus doesn't have a problem with "microevolution."

|9.30.05 @ 12:14PM|#

I prefer the way writers in the 19th century used to handle issues of the I'm-just-saying-what-everybody-thinks-but-is-afraid-to-discuss variety: They would create a (clearly fictitious) character and put the unspeakable words in his mouth. Sort of, "I just got another letter from my old friend Mr. Prickly. As usual, he's going off again on his favorite topic, but between the rants he makes a little sense. . . ." Probably the best-known example of this is Thomas Carlyle's Herr Teufelsdreck (Mr. Devilsh*t) in Sartor Resartus. Even though everybody knows that Teufelsdreck was a mouthpiece for Carlyle, the device still enabled him to put a little distance between himself and the "crazy" opinions being aired. "Hey, folks, I know it sounds nutty, but maybe it's not THAT nutty."

|9.30.05 @ 12:14PM|#

(probably)-Final Threadjack: Anyone interested in meeting up casually with a few fellow Reasonoids in Washington DC on the weekend of October 15th (two weeks from today), drop me an email at my email address. (It's real, if you take out the "nospam." part). So far I have about 4-6 interested. We'll probably just meet up either fairly early or else fairly late (well, sometime during the night) at a bar.

/endThreadjack

Ok, you may continue making your racist comments. :)

|9.30.05 @ 12:15PM|#

I understand why it sounds offensive, but isn't the truth or falsehood of what he said easily determined by math or statistics? Maybe people don't like the statistics, but is the Mr. Bennet's fault?

Phil|9.30.05 @ 12:15PM|#

Wrong. If you abort the fetuses of a group that commits crime below the national average, the crime rate goes up.

That's only true if the population is static and if other groups that commit crime above the average rate reproduce faster than other groups that don't.

|9.30.05 @ 12:16PM|#

Bennett may have to move his shock jock antics over to satellite radio where he can say anything.

|9.30.05 @ 12:17PM|#

Nobody Important, is there a reference to race in that Planned Parenthood reference that I'm not seeing?

Comment by: joe at September 30, 2005 11:57 AM

No.

The purpose of that post was simply to point out that the pro-abortion lobby has already made the connection between abortion and crime rates. It is only one piece of evidence supporting Bennett's claim.

The relation between crime and race was beyond the scope of that Planned Parenthood fact sheet, which is why they didn't mention it. It was simply an advocacy piece for abortion -- nothing more, nothing less.

But if Bennett's critics can accept the link between abortion and crime rates, then they should be able to connect the dots.

Unless they continue to deny the relationship between crime and race.

|9.30.05 @ 12:18PM|#

Phil, if crime rate is a percentage, than Nobody Important is right.

|9.30.05 @ 12:18PM|#

"Back when Dennis Miller was funny." He he . . . when exactly was that anyway? :P

|9.30.05 @ 12:20PM|#

Isn't focusing on a particular race incorrect and Bennet should have said "If stupid people abort their babies"?

And should he have then aborted himself as an example to his fellow stupids?

|9.30.05 @ 12:22PM|#

This is on a par with Barbara Bush's comment that the refugees in the Astrodome were probably better off since they were poor anyway--even if true, it's a really, really stupid thing to say. If I'm going on a date with a man and I say "Whoa! That's one enormous honkin' zit on your nose there!" the fact that I told the truth doesn't change the fact that I should have shut the hell up.

|9.30.05 @ 12:29PM|#

I think Jennifer is right in that it isn't 'sensitive', but isn't that a bad analogy? If you ignore the zit, it'll go away. Again, I think what people don't like is the statistic. Don't go off on Bennet, he didn't create it. Is he supposed to be here to assuage people?

|9.30.05 @ 12:29PM|#

I'm guessing Politeness didn't make his Virtue list.

|9.30.05 @ 12:31PM|#

I remember him being kind of funny. In the 80s. Sort of like David Letterman, who appears to be on track to give Bob Hope a run for Longest Phone-It-In in Showbiz.

|9.30.05 @ 12:31PM|#

Iona--

The zit wasn't meant as a perfect analogy, but just as an example of a truth better left unuttered.

If I were in Bennett's shoes, and for some reason I absolutely had to make that black-abortion comment, I would have at least added, "And if you abort the white babies you'll solve our meth problem."

|9.30.05 @ 12:34PM|#

If I'm going on a date with a man and I say "Whoa! That's one enormous honkin' zit on your nose there!" the fact that I told the truth doesn't change the fact that I should have shut the hell up.
Comment by: Jennifer at September 30, 2005 12:22 PM

Why did that make me think of this bit of dialogue from the Seinfeld episode "The Nose Job?"

Audrey: It's amazing how many beautiful women live in New York. I actually find it kind of intimidating.

Kramer: Well, you're as pretty as any of them, you just need a nose job.

Elaine: Kramer!

Kramer: What? What?

Elaine: How could you say something like that?!

Kramer: What? What do you mean? I just said she needs a nose job.

Elaine: No no, there's nothing wrong with her nose! I'm so sorry, Audrey.

Audrey: No, it's ok.

Elaine: What did you have to say that for?

Kramer: Well, I was just trying to help out.

Elaine: Yeah? Well, you can kiss that jacket goodbye, Mr. Von Nozzin.

Kramer: You see what happens when you try to be nice?

|9.30.05 @ 12:35PM|#

What's amusing is that Bennett's remarks (which were obviously intended as a "reductio ad absurdam" of the Freakonomics argument on abortion) are taken so seriously, while hardly anyone notes the re-emergence of Cross-Burner [1] Charles Murray's racial obsessions (e.g., his recent op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal recycling every stereotype of the savage-underclass-New-Orleans-Negroes that media mythmakers propounded during Katrina).

When Murray wrote a book on what it means to be a libertarian, I thought to myself "Yeah, that's going to increase the already huge number of black libertarians *a lot*..."

[1] I'm not using cross-burner as an invective. He actually was arrested as a 17 year old in Iowa for burning a cross. He said that he didn't realize that it had any racial connotations.

drf|9.30.05 @ 12:37PM|#

Does anybody else think that going to vegas for a weekend with Bennett and Clinton would be a hoot?

With Marion Barry, we have three different vices of the LP covered.

So - Reasonoids - if you can, go to the Reason Vegas Extravaganza. You can even bring your Bill Bennett costume.

drf|9.30.05 @ 12:39PM|#

Does anybody else think that going to vegas for a weekend with Bennett and Clinton would be a hoot?

With Marion Barry, we have three different vices of the LP covered.

So - Reasonoids - if you can, go to the Reason Vegas Extravaganza. You can even bring your Bill Bennett costume.

|9.30.05 @ 12:40PM|#

Are we really upset that Bennet was impolite? I can see being outraged that the crime/race problem exists. But that's not what seems to upset anyone here. It seems they're upset the Bennet wasn't politically correct. There are implications that he is racist, well, as I said early, math and statistics will determine the validity of his statements. I read his quote again and he isn't stating that this would be a good idea. It's a horrid idea, and, well, that's exactly what he says. So what's the issue?

|9.30.05 @ 12:42PM|#

"What I do on our show is talk about things that people are thinking...we don't hesitate to talk about things that are touchy."

"I'm sorry if people are hurt, I really am. But we can't say this is an area of American life (and) public policy that we're not allowed to talk about--race and crime."

Sure Mr. Bennet, you can think and then say what you were thinking to your heart's content. But why would you or anyone else be surprised if as a consequence your words are taken as true expressions of your thoughts?

|9.30.05 @ 12:43PM|#

If I were in Bennett's shoes, and for some reason I absolutely had to make that black-abortion comment, I would have at least added, "And if you abort the white babies you'll solve our meth problem."

Funny.

drf|9.30.05 @ 12:44PM|#

sorry about the extra posts. two more on the way. i apologize.

Iona. no that's not what's upsetting.

okay - do the math. show the statistics. and all the other tests. i'd like to see those, too. Just don't start with correlation and causation. and be careful of the spurious regression and problems of multicollinearity (poverty, social problems scale, etc.etc.etc) - we'd run into the same problems as the religion, crime study below.

what's upsetting is that the great moral soldier took my noam chomsky blow up doll, didn't return it for several weeks, and when i got it back from him, it was still soiled, and it had duct tape over several rips and tears in the material.

THAT'S why i'm upset about all of this.

|9.30.05 @ 12:49PM|#

Rep. George lost me here, "someone with Bennett's intelligence." No, sorry, Willy B. is not overly intelligent. By virture of his drug czariness I'd say he was a bigot, though.

Moving on to my own bigotry, I remember a widely published factoid ten years ago about white Christian women (as oppossed to men, I guess) being, as a percentage, overly represented as an abortion-having group. It seemed to be accepted by Christians as a staring-at-the-floor, slowly-shaking-their-head "Yes, sad but true" sort of thing. Anyone else remember that?

|9.30.05 @ 12:49PM|#

I think my problem with Bennett is that he automatically equated "black" with "economically lower-class". In Freakonomics, the thesis was that the legalization of abortion opened access to affordable abortion for lower-class women who were more likely to rear criminal children (and the crimes we are talking about are generally theft, murder, assualt, etc.). The subsequent drop means the cohort that was originally going to be there simply vanished. Yes, there is a higher rate of poverty among blacks than whites, but that's not the point. There are obviously all sorts of lower-class blacks who don't committ crimes, not to mention a middle and upper-class blacks as well. The point in Freakonomics was class, not race. For me, then, the question is what in Bennett's mind made him single out blacks in such a fashion?

Also, if we were to abort all black fetuses we'd probably see a drop in the welfare payouts, despite the fact that the majority of people on welfare are white. What, specifically, is Bennett trying to prove by saying there is a high correlation between blacks, poverty and crime that we don't already know? It seems to me like a latent, but relatively benign form of racism. He could easily have said "if we abort all white fetuses from lower-class women, the crime rate would drop." Yes, the crime rates in the black community are alarming, but whites and blacks also tend to committ different sorts of crimes as determined by a variety of factors, most importantly income. It's hard to get investigated by the SEC if you're living hand to mouth.

Even if Bennett's statement is correct, what sort of insight do we reap that existing data doesn't already tell us? In other words, if he agree with the author of Freakonomics that abortion lowers crime rates and we combine that knowledge with existing data on the demographics of crime, what further insight is achieved by saying aborting only black fetuses would produce a lower crime rate? I fail to see anything enlightening there.

Warren|9.30.05 @ 12:51PM|#

FWIW, I saw Steven Levitt pimping Freakonomics on CSPAN. He argued that Roe v Wade resulted in a lower crime rate. Presumably because children raised by mothers that would rather have aborted them, are more likely to become criminals as adults. He didn't mention race.

|9.30.05 @ 12:53PM|#

drf,

I agree 100%, like I said, his claim can be verified. He's not making any claim why the statistic is what it is. In fact, he's stating the correllation and has not addressed the causation at all. That's different than confusing the two. And I'm really sorry about the blow-up doll.

|9.30.05 @ 12:54PM|#

FWIW, I saw Steven Levitt pimping Freakonomics on CSPAN. He argued that Roe v Wade resulted in a lower crime rate. Presumably because children raised by mothers that would rather have aborted them, are more likely to become criminals as adults. He didn't mention race.

That makes sense to me. If a mother would have chosen to abort the child rather than have it, there must have been a reason she didn't want to have it (can't give it proper attention or nutrition, poverty, drug habit, mental illness, etc.). Raising a child in a bad environment probably does not help to socialize it properly.

|9.30.05 @ 12:54PM|#

are crime rates a result of arrests and convictions or of people committing crime? I always thought that crime rates were the result of people getting caught and convicted. I am very certain that many people committ crimes and never get caught. In fact, I think that the amount of attention paid by law enforcement would make the people who receive the attention have a higher crime rate than the people ignored.

Also, I thought crime rates are statistically unreliable, a result of collusion between police departments and politicians who use different classifications to create lower rates.

Obviously, I am very ignorant.

Jeff P.|9.30.05 @ 12:58PM|#

Watching SNL's Jeopardy: 1999

U.S. History for 700.
A: Legalized in 1983, it eased overpopulation.
Q: What is baby killing?

|9.30.05 @ 1:00PM|#

Iona,

"Are we really upset that Bennet was impolite? I can see being outraged that the crime/race problem exists. But that's not what seems to upset anyone here. It seems they're upset the Bennet wasn't politically correct. There are implications that he is racist, well, as I said early, math and statistics will determine the validity of his statements."

You know, if we just aborted all the female babies, that would take care of our crabby PMS problem.

Oh, come on, don't be so politically correct. I'm against abortion, and statistics show that women are the ones who get crabby once a month.

|9.30.05 @ 1:00PM|#

*sigh*

I don't know his words were meant to be racist, he was just putting out a ridiculous what-if scenario to counter an argument. And I won't argue whether it may be accurate or not, I won't argue statistics.

I do have a problem that statements like this will confirm prejudices in certain people. Bolster the idea that you get a group of black people together, there will be a crime committed. I mean it's just a hop, skip, and a jump from the reasoned position of "we have a race/crime issue that needs to be addressed" to the silly idea that "black folks = crime so I shouldn't trust them."

Hell, the media already did that during the Katrina aftermath.

Yeah, sure. Perhaps this isn't Bennet's problem. But as a moderately successful black man who has never committed a crime in his life, it becomes my problem. And you know, I've have enough of those already.

Sorry for the rambling comment... these sort of things get to me...

|9.30.05 @ 1:03PM|#

Bennett's being too conservative. If you aborted all babies, we could eliminate crime within a century. That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go to zero.

|9.30.05 @ 1:03PM|#

PERCENTAGE OF VIOLENT CRIMES COMMITTED BY:

PERSONS USING A GUN: 8%

There are 45 million to 90 million gun owners in the United States (15% to 30% of the U.S. Population), with 200 to 250 million privately owned firearms.


AFRICAN-AMERICANS: 25%

There are 35 million African-Americans in the United States (12% of the U.S. population).


source for crime statistics:


U.S. Department of Justice. National Crime Victimization Survey.
Criminal Victimization in the United States. (1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002 Statistical Tables).

Table 40: "Percent distribution of single-offender victimizations, by type of crime and perceived race of offender"
Table 46: "Percent distribution of multiple-offender victimizations, by type of crime and perceived race of offenders"
Table 66: "Percent of incidents, by victim-offender relationship, type of crime and weapons use"

Available on the internet at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/cvusst.htm


Data for:
(warning: the following links are to PDF files, that range from 1/2 MB to 1 MB. Down loading these on dial-up will be slow).

1996

Table 40: 6,930,880 single-offender violent crimes. 26.2% committed by black offenders

Table 46: 2,010,170 muliple-offender violent crimes. 30.4% committed by all-black offenders

Table 66: 8,316,180 crimes of violence. 10.2% committed by an offender with a gun



1997

Table 40: 6,737,250 single-offender violent crimes. 25.3% committed by black offenders

Table 46: 1,757,460 multiple-offender violent crimes. 29.1% committed by all-black offenders

Table 66: 7,911,520 crimes of violence. 8.6% committed by an offender with a gun



1998

Table 40: 6,352,230 single-offender violent crimes. 22.5% committed by black offenders

Table 46: 1,660,000 multiple-offender violent crimes. 25.9% committed by all-black offenders

Table 66: 7,433,670 crimes of violence. 7.5% committed by an offender with a gun



1999

Table 40: 5,788,490 single-offender violent crimes. 24.1% committed by black offenders

Table 46: 1,465,510 multiple-offender violent crimes. 27.1% committed by all-black offenders

Table 66: 6,723,930 crimes of violence. 6.8% committed by an offender with a gun



2000

Table 40: 4,948,330 single-offender violent crimes. 24.1% committed by black offenders

Table 46: 1,258,010 multiple-offender violent crimes. 27.2% committed by all-black offenders

Table 66: 5,815,540 crimes of violence. 7.4% committed by an offender with a gun



2001

Table 40: 4,463,690 single-offender violent crimes. 24.6% committed by black offenders

Table 46: 1,176,880 multiple-offender violent crimes. 35.6% committed by all-black offenders

Table 66: 5,315,500 crimes of violence. 8.8% committed by an offender with a gun



2002

Table 40: 4,158,290 single-offender violent crimes. 22.8% committed by black offenders

Table 46: 1,091,760 multiple-offender violent crimes. 24.1% committed by all-black offenders

Table 66: 4,923,050 crimes of violence. 7.2% committed by an offender with a gun


(Figures about gun-crime are included because I copied-and-pasted this from another document).

|9.30.05 @ 1:09PM|#

"Given that (1) blacks commit more violent crime than gun owners (both in absolute numbers and per-capita)... what exactly is so offensive about Bennett's remarks?"

The assumption behind your analysis is that these theoretical black children would commit crimes at the same rates that actual living blacks do.

In order to justify the assumption you basically have to argue either:
1) Blacks are inherently more likely to commit crimes based simply on skin color (not defensible in the least)
2) The actual problems (not race) that drive the rate of crime incedence (poverty being statistically the largest) will not decrease for blacks for at minimum period of 15 to 20 years (till the kids are of age to be in the high crime demographic)
a) This position implies that either blacks are inherently not able to improve their well being due to their race (again indefensible) or that there is some external force that will continue to hinder the progress of blacks (racism, cycles of poverty, govenment policy, etc).

There may be a case to be made to support the latter but that type of analysis is definitely a lot more in depth than that employed by Bennet in making his statement.

I honestly don't see how anyone would see that as the crux of the stated argument.

|9.30.05 @ 1:10PM|#

This conversation sounds awfully familiar.

|9.30.05 @ 1:13PM|#

are crime rates a result of arrests and convictions or of people committing crime? I always thought that crime rates were the result of people getting caught and convicted. I am very certain that many people committ crimes and never get caught. In fact, I think that the amount of attention paid by law enforcement would make the people who receive the attention have a higher crime rate than the people ignored.
Comment by: Tim at September 30, 2005 12:54 PM

The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports are based on police reports and arrests.

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is based on, as the name suggests, surveys.

The NCVS does not measure homicide, because murder victims have a tendency to not answer poll questions.

More info about the two, and the discrepancies, at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/html/ntcm.htm

|9.30.05 @ 1:14PM|#

Did anyone see the GOP's new website devoted to proving they care about blacks? I'm convinced.

|9.30.05 @ 1:21PM|#

For what it's worth:

from http://womensissues.about.com/cs/abortionstats/a/aaabortionstats.htm:

Abortion Statistics - U.S.

Approximately 1,370,000 abortions occur annually in the U.S. according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute. Click here to see the approximate number of abortions in the U.S. per year from 1973-1996. In 2001, 1.31 million abortions took place.

88% of abortions occur during the first 6 to 12 weeks of pregnancy.

60% of abortions are performed on women who already have one or more children.

47% of abortions are performed on women who have already had one or more abortions.

43% of women will have had at least one abortion by the time they are 45 years old (this statistic includes miscarriages in the term "abortion").

Abortion Statistics - Demographics

Age - The majority of women getting an abortion are young. 52% are younger than 25 years old and 19% are teenagers. The abortion rate is highest for those women aged 18 to 19 (56 per 1,000 in 1992.)

Marriage - 51% of women who are unmarried when they become pregnant will receive an abortion. Unmarried women are 6 times more likely than married women to have an abortion. 67% of abortions are from women who have never been married.

Race - 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.

Religion - 43% of women getting an abortion claimed they were Protestant, while 27% claimed they were Catholic.

Note that while 63% of abortion patients are white, non-Hispanic whites make up about 75% of the U.S. population.

Jeff P.|9.30.05 @ 1:28PM|#

Slightly off topic:
I just saw an ad for a birth control pill that reduces periods to four a year.
How long has this been around?

|9.30.05 @ 1:30PM|#

-(Bama),

I'm afaid your parody can't keep up with reality. Bush's campaign website has a page labelled "Compassion." It linked to lots of photographs of Bush touching black people.

You know, because he's compassionate.

Anyway, damn those pandering Democrats!

|9.30.05 @ 1:35PM|#

The assumption behind your analysis is that these theoretical black children would commit crimes at the same rates that actual living blacks do.
In order to justify the assumption you basically have to argue either:


Comment by: Taxman at September 30, 2005 01:09 PM

or

(3) Blacks do commit more crime than other groups, and the children of criminals are more likely to be criminals.

The first part of that statement is a quantifiable fact. It doesn't explain why, but is simply an observation.

The second part of the statement has nothing to do with race. If it's true, then Bennett is right.

|9.30.05 @ 1:36PM|#

BTW, one of the things that is sometimes left out of discussions of crime and race is that Black people not only commit a disproportionate number of crimes, but they're also disproportionately the victims. From the DOJ:
From 1976 to 2002 --
* 86% of white victims were killed by whites
* 94% of black victims were killed by blacks

The really weird thing that few people seem to be talking about is just how much crime has fallen: Black people, despite their higher levels of victimization, are now less likely to be the victims of violent crime than White people were as recently as 1995.

drf|9.30.05 @ 1:37PM|#

Iona: LOL :)

Jeff P.

there are shots such as Depo Provera that are quarterly ones. There's stuff like that.

and great SNL reference :)

|9.30.05 @ 1:37PM|#

Is there something wrong with aborting non-white fetuses?

After all, abortion is not murder. It's simply a Choice.

Warren|9.30.05 @ 1:43PM|#

Nobody Important,
Way to hang yourself with your own rope there. Crimes committed by people with a gun is a subgroup of crimes committed by gun owners. Since criminals might own unregistared guns, it would be a hard number to calculate. At any rate your "blacks commit more violent crime than gun owners" thesis is bullshit.

|9.30.05 @ 1:45PM|#

Nobody Important, your argument is as unquestionably factual as my argument about eliminating whiny chicks on the rag.

You seem to be missing the point.

|9.30.05 @ 1:52PM|#

What, specifically, is Bennett trying to prove by saying there is a high correlation between blacks, poverty and crime that we don't already know? It seems to me like a latent, but relatively benign form of racism.

I'll note that this fundamental behavior is very common in the mainstream media as well, usually with the implication that racism inherent in the society is the cause. Whenever I see a newspaper article about, say, Latino representation in colleges, I wonder what it could possibly say that makes it different from talking about the representation of people of income or class groupings in general. Usually the answer is, nothing. Yet for some reason the reporter and editor focus on race.

It seems a clear enough rule: If the statement you want to make about race can be explained by income or class, you should not make the statement about race. Maybe they teach it in that statistics class that journalists apparently don't take.

|9.30.05 @ 1:55PM|#

Dammit. I hate to say it, but while Bennett is a twit, his remark was clumsy, even dumb, not racist.

Bennett said economic arguments should never be employed in discussions of moral issues. If it were your sole purpose to reduce crime, Bennett said, "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," he added.

This isn't a racist statement. His argument was, sure, you could, for instance, reduce crime via ethnic cleansing of a minority with a higher crime rate than the average - but that would be evil and absurd. It's utilitarianism is bad, here's a horrific example of why, along the lines of "you could kill one guy to provide 5 life-saving organ donations".

Substitute "male baby" for "black baby" in that bit (women still slightly outnumber men in the US, and men commit most crimes), and where's the huge offense?

Have a liberal black speaker say exactly this (perhaps while arguing about the moral duty to help the disadvantaged, even if it can be argued to weaken the economy), and where's the huge offense?

To be completely fair, there are many good reasons why blacks have been and are wary of white establishment figures focusing on the higher black crime rate. (Sometimes those discussions ended up with the participants running off to commit lynchings, for one.) A white Republican radio host should have realized that his even mentioning black people and crime would make blacks and others wary, and that giving anyone a soundbite that would make him sound like he was advocating ethnic cleansing of blacks was incredibly stupid. He should have instinctively known that many outlets would simply report that soundbyte out of context and frame it as advocacy (perhaps mentioning that "later", he would refer to such an idea as "morally reprehensible").

I don't think Bennett has anything to apologize for. He should explain himself briefly and clearly (and repeatedly). He should also kick himself repeatedly.

This, of course, is the flip side to some of the things Joe argued recently - Republicans try not to talk about blacks and black issues. One huge reason is that if they do, they will be treated with complete hostility by blacks and portrayed as racists by liberals, no matter what they say or do.

|9.30.05 @ 2:00PM|#

It seems a clear enough rule: If the statement you want to make about race can be explained by income or class, you should not make the statement about race. Maybe they teach it in that statistics class that journalists apparently don't take.

But, if you try to do that, you're trying to "avoid talking about race"...

|9.30.05 @ 2:03PM|#

You seem to be missing the point.
Comment by: joe at September 30, 2005 01:45 PM

Please explicitly state what your point is.

|9.30.05 @ 2:08PM|#

"(3) Blacks do commit more crime than other groups, and the children of criminals are more likely to be criminals.

The first part of that statement is a quantifiable fact. It doesn't explain why, but is simply an observation."

This assumes that black criminals are having proportionately as many children. That may or may not be the case.

Additionally if the statement were actually true why have we seen a general reduction in crime rates over time?

Bennet's orinal quote was that this was a rediculous solution to the problem of reducing the crime rate. Its intellectually lazy to not look at actual causes since no useful solutions could possibly arise by focusing solely on race.

|9.30.05 @ 2:11PM|#

LA CROSSE, Wisconsin (AP) -- Seth Hammes was filming in the woods when his camcorder recorded the crack of gunshots, the 17-year-old's screams and the voice of the alleged shooter, promising help that never came.

Authorities say they might never have learned what happened to Hammes, who later died in the woods.

"But right next to him was the videotape," Monroe County Sheriff Pete Quirin said Thursday. "That's when we knew we had a homicide on our hands."

After viewing and listening to the tape, police tracked down 24-year-old Russell Schroeder, who now faces charges of reckless homicide and reckless injury. Schroeder was being held on $250,000 bond. If convicted, he faces up to 85 years in prison.

Family members said Hammes and two of his friends had gone bow-hunting Saturday morning in the woods near Little Falls, about 35 miles northeast of La Crosse.

Hammes put down his bow and picked up his camcorder that afternoon.

According to the criminal complaint, he was shot in the pelvis and then the heart. His camcorder fell to the ground but caught the sound of the shots and his own screams.

The tape shows a person Quirin identified as Schroeder in a nearby field, telling Hammes he would call for help on his cell phone. He then said he couldn't find a signal but promised to go get help.

Instead, authorities say, Schroeder went to a birthday party, home to play video games and then to his job as a custodian at the Army's Fort McCoy near Sparta.

Schroeder didn't call anyone because he was scared he would get in trouble, the complaint said. He told police he thought he was shooting at a squirrel until he heard Hammes scream.

After family and friends reported Hammes missing, police used bloodhounds to find his body in the woods that night.

Investigators initially believed he had just died in the woods -- there was no blood to indicate foul play, and he had been shot with a .22-caliber rifle, which left only small wounds, Quirin said. Then authorities saw the camcorder tape.

Hammes' family gathered at his grandparents' home in La Crosse after Hammes' funeral on Thursday.

Ed Hammes said his nephew loved to tinker with the family's lawn mowers and research pyrotechnics. He hung out with the La Crosse Skyrockers fireworks club, which produces the city's New Year's Eve fireworks.

"He was shy for the most part, but he'd go out of his way to help you," Ed Hammes said.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

|9.30.05 @ 2:12PM|#

If you read the full transcript from the "Morning in America" broadcast you will see that the topic of discussion was "Bad Arguments Agaist Abortion". Bennett was giving an example of a bad argument.

When I first read about this story I listened to the clip hosted by Media Matters. At first it appeared that Bennett was clearly out of line. What he said was despicable. However, after examing the full transcript of the topic I am willing to grant Bennett the benefit of the doubt.

By the way, you don't have to search long, nor far, to find an immense number of arguments in favor of aborting humans, starving humans, or killing humans in order to address the ills of the world. How do you stop hunger in Africa? You could try and increase agriculture production. Or, you could just make sure more people die of starvation. Or, you could take measures to stop people from breeding. Like it or not, policy makers do view hunger as essentially a population problem.

Not even Bono can get policy makers to take trade seriously.

Jeff P.: Not long enough. :)

|9.30.05 @ 2:13PM|#

Whoops. Sorry about that.

|9.30.05 @ 2:24PM|#

Smacky,

I sent you an email about the DC event. I never heard back, is that by design?

Also, any one out there going to the thing in Vegas this next weekend? I will be down there coaching the Nevada boxing team. Anyone know the specifics of where to go, or how to get a ticket for the libertarian event with Drew Carrey?"

|9.30.05 @ 2:27PM|#

kwais,

Sorry I never got back to you. I was planning on emailing everyone who sent me an email all at once with more info on the get-together. (I'm assuming you're still possibly interested.) I will probably email everyone at the end of this weekend, or at least by Monday at the latest. I was just trying to squeeze a few more interested participants out of the threads before that.

Jeff P.|9.30.05 @ 2:30PM|#

If they can chemically alter a woman's reproductive hormonal cycles enough so that the menses only hits quarterly, why the fuck do I still require 8 hours of sleep a night? My increased productivity is a little more important than cramps.
Pharmaceuticals need priorities!

And did the feminine hygeine PAC lobby against this?

|9.30.05 @ 2:38PM|#

drf,
Bennett would be a drag because he plays slots in his private room. That is not fun gambling, I am afraid, it is creepy.

Do you honsetly think that you can simply extrapolate from existing statistics the case where every potential black child is aborted.
Just to use the most obvious example, do you think that black people would stick to their current levels of crime if there was systematic abortions of all blacks? That strains credulity. I sincerely hope that that policy would get many more groups than just blacks to rise up violently.

|9.30.05 @ 2:54PM|#

Oh, come on, don't be so politically correct. I'm against abortion, and statistics show that women are the ones who get crabby once a month.

Joe, if your point here is to show that this statement would be offensive to women...

It isn't. It's true.

|9.30.05 @ 3:06PM|#

You know, if we just aborted all the female babies, that would take care of our crabby PMS problem.i>

Joe, if your point here is to show that this statement would be offensive to women...

It isn't. It's true.

Nobody Important: thanks for doing all the research and getting the studies together. I was in the midst of doing same myself, but all I needed to do was visit H & R!

drf|9.30.05 @ 3:09PM|#

da Coach,
:)

linguist, please don't cancel your subscription, tho'!

Larry A|9.30.05 @ 3:11PM|#

You know, it's axiomatic that, if you aborted all the babies of any distinctly identifiable group -- blacks, whites, Irish, left-handed golfers, Firefly fans, etc. -- then the crime rate would, in fact, go down . . .
Comment by: Phil at September 30, 2005 11:57 AM

Wrong. If you abort the fetuses of a group that commits crime below the national average, the crime rate goes up.

In Phil's statement, the number of crimes would decrease by the percentage committed by the group. The "crime rate" however is usually expressed in crimes per 100,000 population, and that would fluctuate up or down based on the difference between the crime rate for the group and that for the population.

Or if you work for the government, eliminating a group with a lower than average crime rate would cause the overall crime rate to go down in a negative direction.

Are crime rates a result of arrests and convictions or of people committing crime?

In most jurisdictions in the U.S. the crime rate is the number of crimes reported to law enforcement per 100,000 population. That's the standard the FBI uses. Of that a subset will be "cleared." I.e. law enforcement knows who did it and/or it was found not to be a crime. A subset of those will result in arrest, and a portion of those in conviction.

There are also studies that attempt to measure the difference between crimes committed and those reported.

This position implies that either blacks are inherently not able to improve their well being due to their race (again indefensible) or that there is some external force that will continue to hinder the progress of blacks (racism, cycles of poverty, government policy, etc).

Not exactly. If blacks perceive that the only factors hindering their progress are external (racism et.al.) and that there aren't any problems they need to address within their own culture, and therefore refuse to address any internal issues, they may be unable to progress regardless of external forces.

Crimes committed by people with a gun is a subgroup of crimes committed by gun owners.

Valid point, in that some gun owners commit crimes not involving guns. However, if there are even 45 million gun owners and they committed crimes at the rate of blacks, the crime rate would have to be much higher than it is.

Since criminals might own unregistered guns, it would be a hard number to calculate.

Actually, given that most states don't require gun registration, the number of criminals with unregistered guns is swamped by the number of legal gun owners with unregistered guns.

At any rate your "blacks commit more violent crime than gun owners" thesis is bullshit.

Except it's supported by other evidence. For instance Texas concealed handgun license holders are far less likely to be arrested for crimes than the general population. In fact, males with Texas CHLs are less likely to be arrested than Texas females who don't have a license.

|9.30.05 @ 3:11PM|#

On Bennett's remarks.

I read what he was saying as something to the effect of:

"Maybe the result of abortion is to reduce crime statistically. But that is not right, as is is equivalent to murdering babies. Or weeding out the members of society that cause more trouble. But why kill a few people because of the detriment that some of them might cause. Killing them before they have the choice of whether to commit a crime or not. Killing them though most of the aborted fetuses would have grown up to contributed to society. Shouldn't we look into other ways to solve the problems that a few of them might cause?"

Though I am not a pro-life kind of guy, that stikes me as a good argument.

Perhaps using the black people analogy, should not be done by a white republican.

Though

|9.30.05 @ 3:12PM|#

Ironically, more effective and less painful than abortion would be changing the definition of "crime." In other words, making all drugs legal, Bill Bennett, would drastically reduce "crime."

|9.30.05 @ 3:18PM|#

linguist, given your education and work experience, you have surely discovered that "true" and "inoffensive" are not synomymns.

|9.30.05 @ 3:23PM|#

Joe,
You're right, there is a huge difference between something being TRUE and being OFFENSIVE. There's also a difference between STATING and ADVOCATING.

|9.30.05 @ 3:54PM|#

It isn't that he was advocating this, which he wasn't.

It's that, when thinking on his feet and plucking an example out of thin air to make an unrelated point, his mind just immediately went to black criminals.

That reflects poorly on him. That's all.

|9.30.05 @ 4:19PM|#

This is the second time I've heard about Charles Murray's cross burning incident. Does anyone have any more details on this? It is a rather shocking detail even though he was only 17.

|9.30.05 @ 4:30PM|#

"It's that, when thinking on his feet and plucking an example out of thin air to make an unrelated point, his mind just immediately went to black criminals.

That reflects poorly on him. That's all."

If he also picked this out because singling people out for forced abortions because they were black was the most morally egregious thing he could think of, doesn't that reflect well on him vis-a-vis racism?

When you went for an example, you decided to badmouth women... hmmmmm...

|9.30.05 @ 4:37PM|#

"If he also picked this out because singling people out for forced abortions because they were black was the most morally egregious thing he could think of..."

No, he chose forced abortions because it was the most morally egregious thing he could think of.

He picked black people because there sure would be a lot less crime if there weren't any black people.

"When you went for an example," You mean, when I parodied his example? "...you decided to badmouth women..." You mean, I changed the group being disrespected to make people look at the disrespect in a new light? Yup. Guilty.

|9.30.05 @ 4:37PM|#

I'll be a better betting man,
when betting is better vetted.

I'd bet on what Bennett would bet,
so long as I didn't regret it.

|9.30.05 @ 4:41PM|#

Nobody Important, Phil, Iona and drf --

Goddammit, I'm totally confused and I wish you guys would get this nailed down. I'm trying to lower crime rates here. So can I just go and abort all kinds of babies, or do I have to concentrate on certain groups, or what?
------------------

OK, I've figured it out. Here's what we're going to do.

We'll abort black babies to take care of our crime problem.

We'll abort white babies to get rid of our meth problem.

We'll abort American Indian babies to reduce our gambling problem (fewer casinos).

We'll abort Asian babies to improve the college grades of the other groups, because there won't be a whizzo Asian kid in every class to screw up the grading curve for everyone else.

We'll abort Hispanic babies to eliminate the market for dopey slapstick Spanish sitcoms featuring guys dressed up as insects with antennae on their heads.

And we'll abort Jewish babies so we don't have so many damn lawyers.

If anything in this post is construed as racist, I apologize for the impact of my words.

|9.30.05 @ 4:42PM|#

"No, he chose forced abortions because it was the most morally egregious thing he could think of.

He picked black people because there sure would be a lot less crime if there weren't any black people."

Interesting that you're pretending to have been doing Bennett's thinking for him, I'd no idea you were such a bigot.

"When you went for an example," You mean, when I parodied his example? "...you decided to badmouth women..." You mean, I changed the group being disrespected to make people look at the disrespect in a new light? Yup. Guilty."

Ummmm, you're the one saying that the example one reaches for while making a tagential point is significant, and that the point he's making is not.

|9.30.05 @ 4:47PM|#

Yup, the connection between black people and crime was totally read into Bennett's statement by me. I mean, it's not as if he said "You could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."

If you aren't even going to attempt to make arguments instead of lobbing insults, and if you're too dim to understand the difference between making an argument, and parodying that argument, to hell with you.

|9.30.05 @ 4:48PM|#

Percentage rates can be tricky. Although the percentage of blacks causing violent crimes is about 25%, which is higer than their percentage of the population, it's unlikely than one in four commit a violent crimes. It could be that one in twety commit 5 violent crimes in a year.

That was a rational behind Bill Bratton's war on crime in NYC in the early 90s, that there were a few guys (relatively) out there committing many crimes in one day. Get the 5 guys in a neighborhood of 5,000 who are doing all crime and send them away for many years and the crime rate should drop.

Is there something about a small group of black folks that make them prone to violent crime, as there seems to be someting about a small group of white folks that make them prone to serial killings?

|9.30.05 @ 4:54PM|#

Stevo Darkly,
What you have there is a modest proposal.

|9.30.05 @ 4:56PM|#

"Yup, the connection between black people and crime was totally read into Bennett's statement by me."

No, the connection between racism and moral abhorence was *read out* by you. Maybe try reading what I wrote.

Also, if you're too dim to understand my parodying of your parody, and why it applies, well, that's ok, I don't expect much from you.

|9.30.05 @ 5:02PM|#

Yes, I'm really not worth your time. You would much better off if you didn't even bother. Really. I don't think anybody would mind if you never posted again.

|9.30.05 @ 5:02PM|#

I think everything that comes out of Bennett's pie hole reflects poorly on him. And accurately too.

|9.30.05 @ 5:10PM|#

Maybe instead of just sending all these black babies to death row, we should attack the root causes and alleviate the conditions in the womb that force these babies into a life of crime.

For example, I think I read somewhere that one strong predictor of a child's success in life is whether his or her parents had books in the home. So we should be shoving some books in there.

|9.30.05 @ 5:12PM|#

I'm still thinking about how Nobody Important divides the country into two groups: "gun owners" and "black people." Here are a few other subsets we could make up statistics for:

Jews vs. athletes

bloggers vs. teenagers

cops vs. white people

people who understand math vs. English-speakers

...if only the twain could meet!

|9.30.05 @ 5:16PM|#

Any here on .... tonight we have Bill Bennett, former ...., ...., ...., [and sanctimonious prick].

[finds remote control and switches to Dirty Jobs. Now that is one way cool show. ]

|9.30.05 @ 5:17PM|#

My last post was kind of gross.

|9.30.05 @ 5:19PM|#

This is why I don't like a lot of lefties. They're too fucking whiny. OK, maybe Bennet's a racist. Good for him. Maybe he's not. Good for him. But who fucking cares what he said? If he had said "nigger babies" or something, we could be fairly certain that he brought up black folk and crime because he's a racist. But he didn't so we can't really know.

And I'm sorry, joe, but JDM nailed you on that one. Take it like a man.

If I was Bennett, I wouldn't apologise, and I'd make sure everyone knew it. The fact that he's apologising makes me think he feels guilty and that he probably does have some racist thoughts. But really, who doesn't? I'm not saying everyone's overtly racist, but our fight or flight instincts force our brains to categorise everyone into "different" and "not different". Is that really wrong?

Ok, enough rambling...

|9.30.05 @ 5:25PM|#

Here is my untested theory on why the crime rate of black people may be higher than other races;

Welfare.

Higher rate of single mothers. (for a very short time I was a counselor to teenage criminals. Of 800 not one of them was from a two parent household. That is anecdotal, but it has to be statistically significant).

Gun control aimed at them as a troublemaking people.

The fact that law enforcement in this country is effectively an invading army, and not of the community it is supposed to protect, thus population in a black neighborhood are less likely to see police as trustworthy ally. And as a result of that police are likely to stereotype black people as lawbreakers.

OK those are the simple reasons.

I could add that the CIA trafficked drugs to destroy black neighborhoods, but perhaps a joke is not appropriate.

drf|9.30.05 @ 5:40PM|#

Stevo,

why am i in that group?

i'm just pissed about my blow up doll. i didn't even read the article....

is this about ED, ID, or OD? (the three big libertarian themes)

|9.30.05 @ 5:56PM|#

This whole argument illustrates why even though I disagree with both the left and the social right, I only really hate the left. God, they are just so damn whinny and pathetic. There was nothing the slightest bit inappropriate in Bennett's remarks (and for once in his life the underlying point he was making was actually correct) yet the left has a hissy fit because he dared to indirectly bring up the fact that blacks have a much higher crime rate than the general population.

|9.30.05 @ 6:07PM|#

"Yes, I'm really not worth your time. You would much better off if you didn't even bother. Really. I don't think anybody would mind if you never posted again."

Why, joe, are we cross? You know, if I thought we weren't friends anymore I don't think I could bear it.

[Lays keyboard on the table.]

There, now we can be friends again.

(You get awfully crabby yourself given the number of insults you throw around here, including the preemptive insult in your first post on this thread.)

|9.30.05 @ 6:32PM|#

"There was nothing the slightest bit inappropriate in Bennett's remarks (and for once in his life the underlying point he was making was actually correct) yet the left has a hissy fit because he dared to indirectly bring up the fact that blacks have a much higher crime rate than the general population."

I don't think the left reacted specifically to the suggestion that blacks make for a disproportionately large segment of the criminal population; I think people--rather than the left--reacted to the suggestion that the world would be better if there were fewer black people. ...You seem to ignore the difference.

|9.30.05 @ 6:45PM|#

Why don't we just abort joe and call it a day?

|9.30.05 @ 6:51PM|#

I only really hate the left. God, they are just so damn whinny and pathetic.

There really must be some special super-secret dictionary issued directly to those who define politics as liberal-hatin'. From now on, I'm just going to do a word search on "whinny" - if the text that comes up isn't about horses, skip it.

|9.30.05 @ 7:02PM|#

"I don't think the left reacted specifically to the suggestion that blacks make for a disproportionately large segment of the criminal population; I think people--rather than the left--reacted to the suggestion that the world would be better if there were fewer black people. ...You seem to ignore the difference."

The per capita crime rate would decline if those groups, in this case blacks and to a lesser extent hispanics, that had higher than average crime rates lessened in frequency or disappeared. But then (at least I think) the left and soidisant "civil rights activists" yell out the non sequitur that this means the author of my statement advocates mass genocide. Such is the treatment of controversial speech. It's not too surprising when you see leftists (Stanley Fish at least) arguing against free speech.

The left is far greater danger than social conservatives, at least for right now. It's various dogmas like postmodernism and deconstructionism pose the greatest danger to the enlightenment ideals that underly the US and its constitution.

|9.30.05 @ 7:04PM|#

Speaking of aborting grown ups.

As a counter to Stevo Darkly's point about aborting American Indians (Injuns) to reduce gambling; I think the reason we gave them all casino's in the first place was because of the guilt we are supposed to feel over having aborted so many of them when we first came over here.

Wounded knee, diseased blankets and all that stuff.

(full disclosure; my dad is injun, so I might harbour subconscious racial animosities toward those people, therefore my comments should be taken with a grain of salt)

Jason Sonenshein|9.30.05 @ 7:10PM|#

...not afflicted with genocidal fantasies about ethnically cleansing African-Americans. The claim that he is is completely, totally wrong.

I hope no one ever feels the need to say something like this about me. That kind of thing should go without saying.

|9.30.05 @ 7:58PM|#

drf: "why am i in that group?"

(Meaning, the group debating how aborting various groups would affect the crime rate.)

Only because on September 30, 2005 12:44 PM you made a comment about the statistics. At this point, I was already lost -- mathematical stuff makes my head swim -- so I assumed you knew more about the subject than I did and were contributing to the critique of the logic underlying it. Naturally, I called upon you to be part of the solution.

Because if you're not part of the solution, you're partying with a blow-up doll.

As to the actual topic of the article: I haven't read it either. It think it's about the gambling problems of Bennett Cerf.

As you were, bro.

|9.30.05 @ 9:20PM|#

Was flipping around tonite and stopped on FoxNews because they were discussing the Bennett situations. Rich Lowry, standing in for Hannity on Hanity and Colmes, asked the following question to Michael Brown, Democratic strategist (who, as it happens, is black, as was the other guest).

Rich: Welcome back from commercials. I want to ask Michael Brown a question. Michael, do you think it's right to abort black babies?

:: Crickets chirping ::

Oustanding Fox News, outstanding.

|9.30.05 @ 9:24PM|#

"For example, I think I read somewhere that one strong predictor of a child's success in life is whether his or her parents had books in the home. So we should be shoving some books in there."

Stevo Darkly,
Penii are for shoving. Books are not... up there. (I don't think so, anyway, but I'm a man. What do I know? I can do better, etc.)

Ain't it a wonder how modest proposals can rile simple folk?

The wonder is how simple folk manage to post here. How can we fortify our borders?

|9.30.05 @ 9:38PM|#

Somebody needs to take a stats class. I slept through half of mine and was stoned out of my gourd for the other, and even I know that comparing percentages of people who own guns to percentages of people who have an increased level of melanin in their skin is like comparing apples to handguns. For all those numbers you threw out can say, all 8% of those violent crimes with guns were committed by black people. The mere fact that two stats use arabic numerals and they appear to be similar does not mean that putting them next to each other will demonstrate anything other than the speaker's knowledge (or lack thereof) of proper statistical method.

|9.30.05 @ 9:44PM|#

Stevo,
In addition to Bennet Cerf having a tiny bit malocclusion, lisp and a wedgie, he was a sturdy host of "What's My Line," eh?

I also know it was, "Name That Tune," on which Leslie Ughams was "discovered."

I have always loved Leslie, as, I am sure Stevo has. Just not as intimately.
neener neener

Paging Leslie to post here...

|10.1.05 @ 1:00AM|#

Jennifer's post way back when about meth vs crime implies the idea that depending how crime is defined there could be different abortion targets for those so inclined. I wonder how the stats would change if drug laws were different, or if probation violations were dealt with as aberations rather than as crimes.

|10.1.05 @ 4:25AM|#

I think Bennett has picked a good hill to die on. He had an important point about plausible misuses of abortion. At this point, the Jennifer inside my head interjects: "But, Dave, couldn't he have said, 'we will cut down on white collar crime rates if we abort all the white babies?'"

However, I don't think this white-collar-crime restatement has the same impact. It is too ridiculous of a hypothetical in the context of the sick, sad world we live in. Rhetorically, the impression you leave with this restatement is that there is some theoretical connection between abortion and eugenics, but that's it: theoretical, don't waste your time, you got other probs, real ones.

But this theoretical connection is not all Bennett was trying to convey. Joe claims that Bennett was looking for a random example, but I don't think he was or or should have been. Rather, Bennett was trying to say that this abortion-eugenics connection is real, possible and plausible. It is something we should worry about, with viggah! There is a real history to the idea of eugenicsing away black people.

Planned Parenthood doesn't adopt Sanger's more outrageous statements, but there are still real issues here even in our post-Adolf world: do black people abort at a higher rate than whites? Are there ways that we, as society, encorage this differential? Should we? Is there a sinister reading here, a tacit unspoken (and unspeakable!) soft eugenics (or, to coin a phrase, de facto eugenics) going on with these differential abortion rates? Should we be taking active steps to *reduce* the differential?

I can't answer these questions, but they deserve to be asked. I am sorry that it took such a buffoon as Bennett to bring them up, but, like the dude on the blog update, I think Bennett was well within civilized rhetoric on this one.

|10.1.05 @ 6:45AM|#

"sick, sad" should have been --Veblenesque--

|10.1.05 @ 8:50AM|#

"The left is far greater danger than social conservatives, at least for right now. It's various dogmas like postmodernism and deconstructionism pose the greatest danger to the enlightenment ideals that underly the US and its constitution."

it's true. just the other day i was attacked by a gang of postmodernists - they were drinking fair trade coffee on the corner - who chased me down the block screaming "privilege! privilege!" and chastising me for my participation in the social constructs of "whiteness," "maleness" and "shoe-wearing."

|10.1.05 @ 9:02AM|#

OK, I've figured it out. Here's what we're going to do.
We'll abort black babies to take care of our crime problem.
We'll abort white babies to get rid of our meth problem.
We'll abort American Indian babies to reduce our gambling problem (fewer casinos).
Comment by: Stevo Darkly at September 30, 2005 04:41 PM

As Dave W. points out ( October 1, 2005 04:25 AM ), the counter-examples offered by Bennett's critics just don't have the same impact.

Drug use is a victimless crime. And I think the "Meth myth" has been dealt with here recently. And as I pointed out earlier (September 30, 2005 12:06 PM), if you abort all of the white babies, the per-capita crime rate would go up.

Gambling is also a victimless crime.

Besides, American Indians make up only 3% of the population. Unless they're responsible for a hugely disproportionate share of America's "gambling problem," which they probably are not (however you define the gambling problem), aborting American Indian babies won't reduce it. I don't see a lot of American Indians at Vegas casinos, or buying lottery tickets around the country.

But blacks, who make up 12% of the population, are -- for whatever reasons -- responsible for a disproportionate share of crime: 25% of violent crime, and 50% of homicides (both as offenders and victims, as JD pointed out September 30, 2005 01:36 PM).

No amount of politically correct wishing is going to change that. Unlike the other silly proposals, Bennett made a valid point that many people in this country want to deny.

|10.1.05 @ 9:19AM|#

Way to hang yourself with your own rope there. Crimes committed by people with a gun is a subgroup of crimes committed by gun owners. Since criminals might own unregistared guns, it would be a hard number to calculate. At any rate your "blacks commit more violent crime than gun owners" thesis is bullshit.
Comment by: Warren at September 30, 2005 01:43 PM

Except that it's not.

See my post of September 30, 2005 01:03 PM.

The data assumes that criminals who own guns are included in the number of gun owners. If not, then you would have to increase the figure for "number of gun owners." Since the number of gun-crimes remains the same, the crime rate per gun owner would actually go down, by a very tiny amount.

To put it more simply:

number of gun crimes
------------------------------ = crime rate for gun owners
number of gun owners

The numerator (the number on top) is fixed. We know what it is: several hundred thousand (varies by year).

The denominator (the number on the bottom) is an estimate: between 45 million to 90 million. If you make it bigger by including criminals, then the overall number becomes smaller.

Take the 2002 data. 5 million violent crimes, with 7% committed by somebody with a gun. That is, at most, 350,000 additional gun owners (assuming each gun-wielding criminal commits only one crime).

Add that to 45 million (or 90 million) gun owners, and it only increases the number of gun owners by 7/10 of one percent. While the crime rate for gun owners would go down, it would be a change so small that it wouldn't make a difference.

|10.1.05 @ 9:41AM|#

I'm still thinking about how Nobody Important divides the country into two groups: "gun owners" and "black people." Here are a few other subsets we could make up statistics for:
Jews vs. athletes
bloggers vs. teenagers
cops vs. white people
people who understand math vs. English-speakers
...if only the twain could meet!
Comment by: Rick H. at September 30, 2005 05:12 PM

Yes, you could make lists comparing the other groups you mentioned. But there would be little value in doing so.

The reason I compared the crime rate between blacks and gun owners that is because the source of the information I copied already did that, and I was too lazy to edit it out. I stated this at the end of my post of September 30, 2005 01:03 PM.

But, unlike your other comparisons, gun control is advocated and legislated for the purpose of crime reduction. And by the same people who are angry at Bennett for pointing out that blacks commit a disproportionate amount of crime in this country.

If these people were truly concerned about fighting crime, then it makes a lot more sense to concentrate scarce resources on the 12% of the population that's responsible for 25% of the violent crime (and 50% of the homicides), then the 15% to 30% of the population that's responsible for 8% of the violent crime.

But profiling one group as potential criminals is considered unacceptable bigotry, while profiling the other group is considered a "reasonable" and "common sense" measure.

|10.1.05 @ 9:52AM|#

For future reference:

As of July 1, 2003:

US population = 290,800,000

White (total) = 237,900,000 = 81.8%

White, non-Hispanic = 197,300,000 = 67.8%

Hispanic = 39,900,000 = 13.7%

Black = 38,700,000 = 13.3%

Hawaiin and other Pacific Islander = 960,000 = 0.3%

American Indian and Alaskan Native = 4,400,000 = 1.5%


from The World Alamance and Book of Facts 2005 (p. 619).

|10.1.05 @ 9:57AM|#

Oops. In addition to grossly misspelling almanac, I forgot to include:

Asian = 13,500,000 = 4.6%

|10.1.05 @ 11:41AM|#

If we abort every white baby in this country, then within a generation we will free the world from the triple scourges of NASCAR, mullet haircuts and Velveeta. And I think that would be a fair trade-off.

It's not racist, because it's true.

Corrections Dept.|10.1.05 @ 11:52AM|#

http://destee.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-34898.html

|10.1.05 @ 12:04PM|#

It matters not, CD. Just because black people have managed to adapt to a world of Velveeta doesn't mean the blame for it lies at their feet. That sin is upon my people.

|10.1.05 @ 12:22PM|#

emme:

"THIS FRIDAY BELL Curve perpetrator Charles Murray will be in town to speak at the Center of the American Experiment. I mentioned this to a friend the other day, and he reminded me of a little-told story from Murray's past. Near the end of his high school days in Newton, Iowa, Murray and some of his pals went out one night and burned a cross next door to the police station. To my knowledge, the reams of coverage accorded Murray for his pseudo-scientific apologia on behalf of racism have produced only two mentions of this incident. One was in a 1994 New York Times Magazine profile, the other a bit later on the Donahue show. In both instances Murray protested that he had no idea as to the racial significance of cross-burning. There were only two black families in Newton in those days, an old school chum of his added in the Times piece. Well. As it happens, I grew up just 30 miles away from Murray's central Iowa hometown, in an even smaller farming town with no black families at all. But somehow I managed to learn what cross-burning meant by the time I finished high school, and I expect Murray did too."

http://www.citypages.com/databank/18/841/article3175.asp

|10.1.05 @ 12:35PM|#

Yes, you could make lists comparing the other groups you mentioned. But there would be little value in doing so.

Bingo.

Nobody Important, let me be very clear, as my point was perhaps too abstract: In contrasting the two groups, you are not only assuming there are no black people who own guns, you're making any number of completely irrelevant assumptions on top of that. This is not comparing apples and oranges, it's comparing apples and monster trucks.

Also, if you're "too lazy" to edit out reams of useless, off-topic slag data that obscures whatever the argument is you're trying to make, don't be annoyed when people's eyes glaze over.

|10.1.05 @ 12:35PM|#

we should abort whomever the hell came up with the idea of putting velveeta in macaroni and cheese. that's fucked, man.

|10.1.05 @ 12:48PM|#

In contrasting the two groups, you are not only assuming there are no black people who own guns, you're making any number of completely irrelevant assumptions on top of that. This is not comparing apples and oranges, it's comparing apples and monster trucks.
Comment by: Rick H. at October 1, 2005 12:35 PM

I never said nor implied that there was no overlap between the two groups.

The purpose of the original data was to show the stupidity and hypocrisy of opposing "racial profiling" while advocating "gun owner profiling" (which is what gun control is).

If we acknowledge that some gun-using criminals are black, what changes?

And what are the other "completely irrelevant assumptions?"

drf|10.1.05 @ 12:55PM|#

hi Stevo!

I was thinking about some of the difficulties in any "statistics" here.

(actually, the thought of aborting certain grops and lowering crime is one of the stoopider(sic) conversations probably ever witnessed here - or we could endure the pressures of living in a homogenic culture. shudder. i also don't like considering the lives of individuals on a "cost-benefit" scale)

but then the duct tape riped off poor Noam. well, all the clingwrap i had... ahem. whoops.

it's too bad "chicago sox fan" isn't posting. you two can potentially have the world series!

cheers!

drf

|10.1.05 @ 1:15PM|#

i also don't like considering the lives of individuals on a "cost-benefit" scale
Comment by: drf at October 1, 2005 12:55 PM

Niether do I.

But most of Bennett's critics would, under other circumstances, be quick to condemn anyone who considers abortion the taking of an individual life; or worse, equate abortion with abortion.

|10.1.05 @ 1:16PM|#

i also don't like considering the lives of individuals on a "cost-benefit" scale
Comment by: drf at October 1, 2005 12:55 PM

Niether do I.

But most of Bennett's critics would, under other circumstances, be quick to condemn anyone who considers abortion the taking of an individual life; or the greater sin of equating abortion with genocide.

|10.1.05 @ 1:30PM|#

D'oh. Apologies for the double post. Not sure why a draft was posted. I must have hit a wrong button somewhere. Obviously, I need to get away from the computer for a while.

|10.1.05 @ 2:37PM|#

it's true. just the other day i was attacked by a gang of postmodernists - they were drinking fair trade coffee on the corner - who chased me down the block screaming "privilege! privilege!" and chastising me for my participation in the social constructs of "whiteness," "maleness" and "shoe-wearing."

...Yeah, those postmodernists and deconstructionists can get pretty rowdy when they're all hopped up on latte! ; )

drf|10.1.05 @ 2:57PM|#

Nobody:

would you like to borrow my Noam Chomsky doll?

|10.1.05 @ 8:17PM|#

"If we abort every white baby in this country, then within a generation we will free the world from the triple scourges of NASCAR, mullet haircuts and Velveeta. And I think that would be a fair trade-off."

Jennifer,
Why do you hate Dixie?

|10.1.05 @ 10:02PM|#

"Why do you hate Dixie?"

She doesn't! ...or, at least, I hope she doesn't!

...I know she's been around a lot of yankees, but I've been in California for a long time, and my loyalty's still clear as day. ...Still, California isn't as bad as being up North.

...but she's from Virginia too, one of the most beautiful parts of Dixie's most beautiful state. ...She doesn't hate Dixie--that would break all our hearts!

Tell us you don't hate Dixie Jennifer! ...Please?

; )

|10.2.05 @ 9:55AM|#

Charles Murray on Hurricane Katrina aftermath.

|10.2.05 @ 10:28AM|#

"Why do you hate Dixie?"

Because it gave the world NASCAR, mullet haircuts and Velveeta.

(I don't actually know if the Velveeta thing came from the South or not, but with the blame for NASCAR and mullet haircuts already on the Southern soul, one more black mark won't hurt it.)

|10.2.05 @ 10:31AM|#

Actually, I don't even know if mullet haircuts came from the South or not, but with the blame for NASCAR already on the Southern soul, one more black mark can't hurt it.

|10.2.05 @ 12:22PM|#

Jennifer,
Why do you hate black marks?

|10.2.05 @ 2:06PM|#

Nobody Important:

So you are absolutely positive the at the crime rate among unborn blacks will be the same or greater than that amogst living blacks today?

This is the prerequisite for declaring Bennet's statement true.

You are hanging your hat on extrapolating current statistics 15 to 20 years into the future and applying them to a population of people that doesn't exist (ie Blacks born prior today v. Blacks born sometime after today) This is an extremely weak analysis.

To the extent that other groups (hispanics especially) are having more children and gowing as a portion of the US population faster than blacks, Under your analysis (which is incorrect in either case) blacks will make up a smaller percentage of the US population. So even if blacks were to maintain the same number of crimes per capita with the black population, when you apply that to the overall US, the crime rate would go down.

|10.2.05 @ 2:12PM|#

Nobody Important:

So you are absolutely positive the at the crime rate among unborn blacks will be the same or greater than that amogst living blacks today?

This is the prerequisite for declaring Bennet's statement true.

You are hanging your hat on extrapolating current statistics 15 to 20 years into the future and applying them to a population of people that doesn't exist (ie Blacks born prior today v. Blacks born sometime after today) This is an extremely weak analysis.

To the extent that other groups (hispanics especially) are having more children and gowing as a portion of the US population faster than blacks, Under your analysis (which is incorrect in either case) blacks will make up a smaller percentage of the US population. So even if blacks were to maintain the same number of crimes per capita with the black population, when you apply that to the overall US, the crime rate would go down.

|10.2.05 @ 6:19PM|#

Actually, I don't even know if mullet haircuts came from the South or not, but with the blame for NASCAR already on the Southern soul, one more black mark can't hurt it.

See, I was givin' you credit for the Mullet--though I once heard the cut was actually invented by and named after a famous coiffeur in France. Originally, it was pronounced "Mull-ay".

...Just kidding. ; )

I think the mullet caught on in the South first, or so it seemed to me. ...But NASCAR I think you can blame on the Midwest--Indiana specifically.

And the South makes up for the mullet in so many other ways. ..The world's most beautiful scenery, the world's most beautiful women, some of the world's finest cuisine, etc. ...Yeah, the grass definitely seemed greener back home, but I think that's because it was.

|10.2.05 @ 7:05PM|#

Thanks for the link, Twba. At least one person around here isn't taking the "Murray is an eeevil cross-burner" line.

|10.3.05 @ 9:39AM|#

I don't know what Charles Murray did when he was seventeen. Unlike many of Murray's critics, I read The Bell Curve. It is an interesting book that deals with far more than the average IQ scores of different racial categories.