Between Bill Frist's perfectly reasonable explanation about the
sale of his stock, the seemingly standard fundraising process of
TRMPAC and Rep. Tom DeLay allies, and absolute weirdness of Judith
Miller's sudden decision, there has to be something in the water
that liberals and Democratic hacks are drinking. How else to
explain the Bill Bennett dust up?
Summing up, here is what played out on Bennett's excellent
morning radio show, "Morning in America." Bennett was speaking with
a caller who claimed there were statistics that showed that were
abortion still illegal, the U.S. population would be large enough
to cover the Boomer Generation's Social Security tab.
Bennett disagreed. And went on to point out that this line of
statistical extrapolation was a tricky thing. This was a reference
to the book, Freakanomics, which built its arguments
around such extrapolations, and which posited that the 30-year-low
in crime today was the result of abortions in the inner cities.
Bennett pointed to these statistics, and said, "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."
Bennett then said, very clearly and insistently, that such an
approach was "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."
You would have to be either extremely dim or extremely bent on
creating trouble for Bennett to take his conversation any other way
than what he intended: abortion under any circumstance is bad.
Bennett is one of conservatism's staunchest leaders. He's a good
man, a great thinker, and one of our stronger polemicists on issues
from Iraq to terrorism to life issues. We cannot and must not allow
him to be marginalized by the crowd that is now attempting to do
just that.
(UPDATE, 12:31 p.m. Rush Limbaugh has rushed in
to fight off Bennett's hack distorters. Tune in or read the
transcript tonight at rushlimbaugh.com)
topics:
Social Security, Abortion, Iraq, Conservatism
