Bill Bennet, that is. I nearly plowed into him one morning in mid-2003 when I was riding to work. It was near the World Bank and IMF, and he was crossing the street. Woulda ruined my bike, probably. Who needed that hassle?
The Great Moralist on his radio show earlier this week said this, during what appears to be a typically inane conversation about abortion, the crime rate, and the book Freakonomics. Neither Bennet nor his caller, to their credit, said they bought the argument that crime was down because the abortion rate was up, but then (for whatever reason), Bennet added this:
But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.
And people wonder — wonder in amazement and horror! — where places like Treblinka or the emptying of Cambodia’s cities by the Khmer Rouge came from. They started as sparks in the mind, twinkles in the eye, unthinkable ideas thought often enough and unspeakable ideas spoken often enough. Then they became policies. And then bureaucratic problems to solve. And we know what happens to those.
Now, Bennet is a washed-up has been. But this is the kind of nonsense that conservatives, especially law-and-order types, “wonk” about when they discuss government policy. How best (and who best) to kill and torture in order to create a compliant and well-behaved world.
(NOTE: To be fair, one morning not long after arriving here in 1997, while driving my tuck in Arlington, I nearly clobbered Paul Begala and James Carville. Got the same nasty look from them I later got from Bennet, too.)
12:37 pm on September 29, 2005
