The biggest problem with the analogy from a logical perspective is that it’s comparing two disanalogous points.
Freakanomics talks about how the option of legal abortion lowers crime rates, because people in situations where they believe they can’t effectively raise a child choose not to have the child, leading to fewer poorly-raised children, leading to fewer criminals.
Bennett talked about how coerced abortions of black babies would lower crime rates, because criminals are disproportionately black.
Granted, there are all sorts of problems with the “because” part of Bennett’s argument. The thing is, even the modest proposal part is stupid: coerced abortions are of course nasty and awful, and you’ll find nobody that disagrees with you. Voluntary abortions are much less problematic, according to a significant chunk of the population. In any case, you can’t just substitute “you could abort every black baby” (the act of a genocidal maniac) for “you could allow people to choose abortions.”
Reproductive choice is the key, and Bennett has simply pointed out that removing reproductive choice is monstrous. That’s got nothing to do with the Freakanomics observation.
I apologize. I was going by the MSNBC article statement
and did not realize that the radio show caller had asked an entirely different question that Bennet was trying to answer/refute by *using * the Freakanomic example (ie abortions lower crime) as a strawman pillar in his (now apparently highly disjointed and clumsy) refutation argument.
His statement is false. If all black babies were aborted, it would have such a profound effect on the economy and social structure of the country, that one could only guess wildly what future indicators would be, including the crime rate. Yet he claims to “know that it’s true”.
All excellent points, and I’m really quite happy to retract any interpretation of his statements that may have been overly generous. To be honest, I found his comments sufficiently inane for the reasons I mentioned that I didn’t give the matter a whole lot of thought beyond that. It’s clear I should have, so I apologize if my comment may have minimized the importance what should have been the obvious core of his offense.
From the September 29 broadcast of Salem Radio Network’s Bill Bennett’s Morning in America:
Text from Media Matters http://mediamatters.org/items/200509300008
Unless he made a clarifying point afterwards (that day, hopefully within minutes), it’s the last part that offensive, and IMHO racist.
“…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.” Unless it’s edited, the caller does not bring race into the discussion, Bennett does. On the following day he tries to rehabilitate himself “One could just as easily have said you could abort all children and prevent all crime, uh, which is certainly true”. IMHO this is purely a CYA attempt. How about I should have said, admitting that his words could easily be heard as racist. Watching the talking heads tonight I was amazed at how they tried to turn the controversy into one about abortion, as Bennett does “But in sum, let me just re-state what I said yesterday: The whole idea of aborting anyone to reduce crime is, as I said on the air yesterday, “impossible, ridiculous, and morally-reprehensible.” That should end it.” Steven D. Levitt’s comments “Race is not an important part of the abortion-crime argument that John Donohue and I have made in academic papers and that [co-author Stephen J.] Dubner and I discuss in Freakonomics.”, “None of our analysis is race-based because the crime data by race is generally not deemed reliable.”, “There is one thing I would take Bennett to task for: first saying that he doesn’t believe our abortion-crime hypothesis but then revealing that he does believe it with his comments about black babies. You can’t have it both ways.” are damning.
The rest of the Media Matters article and the Slate article IMHO make this too clear. This is about race.
This is a riot! Why is it racist to reference a work that suggests that abortions reduce crime by eliminating potential criminals in categories defined by race and economics–especially when the reference is to question the moral implications of this contention?
I haven’t read the book, but is Bennett’s statement false here?:
If not, then this is just more nonsensical hand wringing over NOTHING. In fact, it’s worse than that. It’s a pile on from the “I’m offended” brigade on a guy who is actually on their side of the argument. Unfortunately, he’s doesn’t fit the profile, so he must be admonished.
::gasp!:: He mentioned race! He MUST be a racist then, regardless of the actual point he was making. After all, he’s William Bennett.
That part in bold expresses quite well what bugs me about Bennett’s comments. And if you read the other stuff in the transcript posted by crowmanyclouds, it’s even more clear that he probably does agree with Freakanomics, but for some reason he can’t accept that and so insists on debunking the conclusion on moral grounds.
Killing all the black babies will not lower the crime rate. That would only happen if more potential criminals than law-abiders exist in the unborn black population. It looks like the former Secretary of Education needs to go back to school and read up on some statistics.
Bennett actually says there are too many factors to take into account, not that he doesn’t believe it. I don’t really think it matters if he was correct in his statement. I’ve casually followed Bennett for years and he has never been a relly good logical thinker. He was trying to be an agitator and he accidentally succeeded.
I have a slightly different perspective on this. I caught it on the tv news, but missed the statement Bennett made. I only saw the democrats reacting, along with a reading of a statement from the White House. In thought he must have really said something bad. When I looked it up online, I kept looking for the part that justified the reactions I’d seen. Jesse Jackson Jr looked like he was using all his willpower to keep from personally finding Bennett and kicking his ass.
This is what the man said. Plain and simple. He apparently believes- and stated such- that the crime rate will go down if you murder all of the black children born in the United States of America.
It is, to say the least, such an appallingly racist remark to make as to make him the reasonable subject of the vitriol and criticism he is currently the target of.
The fact that he said it’s impossible, rediculous and morally reprehensible is a sop. He said it because his heart was moving faster than his brain and feeding hateful thoughts directly from his mouth. It was frantic back-pedalling- but he just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bear to truly withdraw such a remark, and so he finished that sentence with the fairly straightforward, easily understood and utterly damning " but your crime rate would go down".
My god.
I don’t see him defending himself with armloads of data, because the statements are indefensible.
Back-pedalling? What in the world are you talking about? The part about its being “impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible” is the point he was driving at the whole time. Look at the remarks leading up to it: “I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this, because you don’t know. I mean, it cuts both [ways]. . .”
And, for clarification, his remarks the next day: “I was referencing this debate and pointing out how tricky it is to argue for a pro-life position because of economic benefits. I was pointing out that abortion shouldn’t be opposed for economic reasons any more than racism should be supported or opposed for economic reasons. Immoral policies are wrong. And they’re wrong because they’re wrong, not because of an economic calculus.”
There’s no way of knowing if this statement is true, for the reason Monocracy described in post #23. However, using it as an example, in passing, for the sake of argument seems perfectly valid, at least in private. On the radio, that sort of analogy should be avoided because it would be so easy for others to take it out of context and/or misunderstand it. Bennett is guilty of being careless and perhaps a little insensitive, but nothing more.
You misread my post. I said that IF the caller was arguing that abortions are GOOD because they lower the crime rate, then it’s a poor argument. I didn’t say it was WRONG; I said it’s not a good argument for abortion. Abortions should be allowed because it leaves the choice to the mother, rather than giving it to the state. To argue that abortions are good because they have X effect on society is pretty suspect, IMO. I don’t have any problem with observing the effects, but I do have a problem with anyone arguing that such effects support the premise that abortion should be allowed (and as I said, I don’t know if this was what the caller was saying.) Abortion as social engineering is a pretty dangerous precedent that I don’t think should be given serious consideration. Any benefit to society in population trends ought to be thought of as purely serendipitous, not a goal to be sought after. Abortion should be allowed, but never encouraged.
All this also assumes that some humans are born criminals!
If anyone could prove a genetic predisposition to criminality, then there could be a reasoned argument for selective abortion. Without any evidence of a genetic predisposition, we’re forced to accept that other factors lead to criminal behavior.
If you kill Hitler in his crib you don’t get Hitler’s WW2, if you kidnap him, and he’s raised in a different part of the world, you’d get the same result. Though you probably still get WW2!
Well, this is a Debate, not G.Q. You can no more prove that it is a valid argument than I can prove that it’s morally corrupt and ethically reprehensible. He used his right to Free Speech to say something that- as is being debated- is impossible and is in some but obviously not all circles held in contempt.
To postulate such a thing, whether in public or in private, would require a fair bit of solid back-up. As of yet from what I have seen, Mr. Bennett has provided no proof that killing all black babies would solve a crime problem in this country.
Irrefutable, yet Mr. Bennett would have us believe that to kill black babies would be to solve the crime problem. Impossible. Of course it’s impossible, it is a statement born of many things but not born of truth or factual accuracy.
I’m not taking Bennet’s side of course, but I don’t see how that’s true. Why do you think there would have to be more potential criminals than law abiders among blacks?
What do death-penalty statistics have to do with whether people not yet born might potentially commit crimes? Death penalty cases only apply in very specific circumstances. Bennet didn’t specify death-penalty crimes.
He never said that. He said “the crime rate would go down”. He didn’t say it would “solve the crime problem”.
I really don’t think Bennett cared whether it was true or false; he just threw it out as a ridiculous example. But if you really want to debate it, I would say it’s true. Given that a certain percentage of all people commit crimes, ANY reduction in population would tend to lower the number of crimes committed. If you have 200 people, and 10% commit crimes, then 20 crimes were committed. If you have only 100 people, and 10% commit crimes, then only 10 crimes were committed. To argue otherwise would be to provide evidence that others would somehow take up the slack, and commit more crimes. I don’t believe there is a fixed number of criminals that remains constant even with changes in population.
Just to add - so that nobody misconstrues my post as a defense of Bennett, I should have also said that Bennett’s example was poorly-chosen and showed bad judgment. As VarlosZ said, careless and insensitive, but nothing more.