Bill Bennett

[The Duke]

Just my opinion, take it for what it's worth and nothing more.  I hadn't seen a thread on this subject of Bill Bennett and wanted to state my views, as I think he's really been treated in a reprehensible way.

For those unfamiliar, here is what happenned.  Bill Bennett is a former cabinet secretary who now hosts a political radio show.  A caller called his show and said that the pro-life position is validated by the current fiscal insolvency of Social Security because without abortion there would be more workers paying into the system.  Bennett did not agree that this was a valid point.  If the two were connected, the connection was at best tangential, and even if they were connected we should not examine issue like this.  Abortion is a moral question, if it is acceptable it should be legal, if it is not acceptable it should not be legal.  The impact is has on Social Security is hardly the central issue.

He went on to prove his point by demonstrating to the caller that the exact opposite argument could be made by the pro-choice side, that their position, too, can be justified by its tangential impact on other societal problems like crime.  If it makes sense to ban abortion to improve Social Security, it makes just as much sense to institute mandatory abortions for black children to reduce crime.  But the reality is that neither makes sense, which is why the abortion debate should center around the morality of abortion and not the crime rate or the fiscal solvency of entitlement programs.

Bennett has many enemies, almost all on the left.  They have aassailed him.  They have attributed the position that black babies should be aborted to Bennet, when in fact Bennett was not endorsing that view at all. Quite the opposite, he was ridiculing it.

Shame on anyone who wants to attack Bill Bennett for what he said.  He is a legitimate intellectual, and his detractors just aren't.

[AuH2O]

Obviously various leftist wackos were upset, though actually some hard left bloggers defended Bennett. Really he needs no defense, any more than someone saying "the Earth is round" needs defense.

[muon2]

Clarence Page's editorial  column yesterday seemed a more reasonable response from the left. He cuts Bennett some slack, but would still like him to clarify his remarks and recognize how they are misconstrued.