compassionate conservatives speak out
Is there a good list of quotes from conservatives expressing their rather unique take on compassion? Because I think the world needs one. You know, something with stuff like Barbara Bush's comment that after Katrina "things are working out very well for the poor" and Billy O'Reilly wishing the U.N. building was flooded and radio Host Glenn Beck talking about his hatred of victims of both Katrina and 9/11? Wouldn't that be a good list. Katrina really exposed the core of compassionate conservatism, but those afraid the right wing can run out of ways to express their truly feelings for the disenfranchised will be heartened by Bill Bennet's comment that "you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."
Besides showing you the extent of conservative compassion, quotes like these also do a good job of exhibiting the great breadth of conservative stupidity. For example, no, crime rates wouldn't go do if there were no more black people in this country. The underclass that commits crime would just be made of of a different mix of races. Poverty breeds crime Bill, not skin tone. But I guess they're all just blinded by compassion.
If one looks at the actual Justice Departmemt statistics for crime, it is quite clear that about African-Americans are accused in about 25-30 percent of serious crimes. That is disproportionate. But, it hardly "most crime." As has probably always been the case, most crime, especially violent crime, is committed by family, friends and acquaintances of the victim, and those people are usually of the same race.
ReplyDeleteBut, quite a few on the Right do not look at Justice Department data. Instead, they rely on a biased report by the white supremacist Jared Taylor called "The Color of Crime." It claims that blacks commit most crime in the U.S., by focusing on crimes in which whites are alleged to be the victims of crimes by African-Americans. Since victim and perpetrator are usually the same race, that means ignoring much of the crime in America. The purpose of the report is to forward the cause of white supremacy, not to provide reasonable analysis of crime.
Bennett's views are quite common among 'race realists,' people who believe blacks and Hispanics are genetically inferior. I suspect material written by people in that movement was relied on in reaching his conclusion. The people in that movement are definitely not liberals.
And, BTW, though Bennett is too obtuse to realize it, aborting all white babies would greatly reduce crime, too.
My main objection isn't so much Bennett's callousness as his stupidity. If he had said, I wonder if there were an increase in abortions among blacks if crime would go down, I would accept that as a reasonable question to ask. I think it's reasonable to ask most questions; this is how we figure stuff out. There is a problem with the politically correct line in which some possibilities cannot even be discussed.
ReplyDeleteBut he didn't ask a question, he made a statement. And the statement is moronic, because it shows a basic lack of understanding of how things work. Let's say you passed a law in the U.S. that only white people could have babies. Would crime just stop within 50 years? Would crime be lessened in any way? I doubt it, but I won't state that I know factually one way or the other. I suppose the thing to do would be study homogenious populations versus more mixed populations and determine how much of a factor race is in crime. Or, if we decide to take Bennett's statement in its worse interpretation, that he just thinks black people are more genetically predisposed to crime than everyone else, one could just check the statistics to see if crime is more common in countries with predominately black populations.
But Bennett's statement did not indicate any sort of right wing intellectual curiousity, it was just a bald statement that less black people equals less crime. And that is utterly moronic.