Bill Bennett, 'Niggardly', And The Adults-Left-Behind Act

Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! (James 3, KJV)

Former U.S. Education Secretary Bill Bennett made some remarks the other day on his radio program that were, well–How shall I say it?–harmless. But one person's harmlessness is another person's mayhem. Even Bennett's observation that he, as a teacher of philosophy (see his comments here), is quite used to addressing all sorts of controversial and even repulsive ideas in an analytic, detached manner, cannot mollify the unappeasable righteousness of his critics. He is, in their minds, damnable. And he is damnable solely because his accusers do not know what it means, even remotely, to be philosophical.

Before I share with you Bennett's XXX-rated words, uttered by a free man in a free country proud of its long legacy of protecting free speech, let me remind the reader of a similar story. Perhaps you'll remember the Washington D.C. mayor who fired a staffer who used the word "niggardly" during a meeting. Gasp! Gasp! Did he say "niggardly?!" Alas, he did, and the delicate souls around him who heard the offending sound pressured the leadership to such a degree that the man was banished.

Contratimes readers, I believe, are not dolts. We pride ourselves at our language skills (who needs spell check anyway?). We pride ourselves on the breadth of our vocabularies. And we pride ourselves on being humble enough to refrain from using or censuring a word until we understand it for ourselves. Hence, we know that the word "niggardly" has NOTHING to do with the other word that shares a homophonous quality. In fact, niggardly, which means to be stingy or miserly, comes from the late Middle English root, nigon. The other word has its roots in the French and Spanish words for "black", the color black (négre and negro, respectively).

Being offended by 'niggardly' is a bit like being offended by the word jewelry, since it is sonically similar to Jewry.

So, here comes Bill Bennett with an offending set of words. Hold on to your consciences, because they are about to be sullied by his alleged reckless viciousness (remember, these were spoken during Bennett's call-in radio program):

Caller: I noticed the national media, you know, they talk a lot about the loss of revenue, or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I was curious, and I've read articles in recent months here, that the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade, the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we know it today. And the media just doesn't--never touches this at all.
Bennett: Assuming they're all productive citizens?
Caller: Assuming that they are. Even if only a portion of them were, it would be an enormous amount of revenue.
Bennett: Maybe, maybe, but we don't know what the costs would be, too. I think as--abortion disproportionately occurs among single women, no?
Caller: I don't know the exact statistics, but quite a bit are, yeah.
Bennett: All right, well, I mean, I just don't know. I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this, because you don't know. I mean, it cuts both [ways]. You know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. Well--
Caller: Well, I don't think that statistic is accurate.
Bennett: Well, I don't think it is either, I don't think it is either, because first of all, there is just too much that you don't know. 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.

Alright. Let's pause for a moment. What is Bennett saying? Is he saying that every black baby should be aborted? Is he saying that killing just black babies is a good thing, and that black babies are the only ones committing crimes? No, he is not saying any of these things. What he IS saying is that certain hypotheses, such as those posited both by the caller and the writers who wrote Freakonomics, are "morally reprehensible" and "tricky."

The authors of Freakonomics, by the way, find a correlation between the passage of Roe v. Wade and the decrease–16 to 20 years later (or thereabouts)– in the crime rate in America. They intimate (or those who read their work so intimate) that many "criminals" would have been born into single-parent families (crime and single parent families bear a correlation); abortion reduced their numbers. Moreover Bennett, who is pro-life, tacitly connects abortion to race because statistically those women who are single, poor and aborting babies tend more often than not to be black. Bennett then, it would seem, is suggesting that REAL HARM has been done to the black population by the promotion of abortion: there are disproportionately more blacks than whites who have abortions. In short, supporters of abortion may have, according to Freakonomics (or as some suggest), inadvertently caused a drop in the crime rate. All this, to Bennett, is reprehensible. And in the end one can only damn Bennett for being too academically hypothetical for some of his listeners.

(Look, I am even nervous discussing these matters for fear of appearing like I support the aborting of black babies or that I think all blacks are criminals. I believe nothing of the sort.)

[For a decent summary of the problem, read this article.]

One Ugly Fact

This is what offends me.

Friday, September 30, while listening to MSNBC Live–which featured a discussion between a news anchor and guest Thomas Oliphant, a self-defined liberal columnist from the Boston Globe–I heard them both engage in a grand fallacy. And that fallacy is suggested in this question, which they essentially asked: How is it that a man who has a gambling addiction (Bill Bennett) would dare speak to America about ethics or morality? (Bennett has written or edited several works on ethics, including The Book of Virtues and The Moral Compass.)

You see, Bennett does have a gambling addiction, and he not only knows it, he has confessed it, sought and received help for it, and has publicly renounced it. And though he may still struggle against it, he nonetheless includes himself when he speaks–if he does so speak–of the "sinful".

Does anyone really believe that only the righteous can speak of righteousness? Apparently Tom Oliphant does. Do some people think that only the righteous can speak against immorality? Apparently Tom Oliphant does.

It goes without saying that it is hard to listen to the moral posturing of a person blind to, or in denial of, his or her own vices. But if there is one virtue that exceeds all others, it is the virtue of disclosure, of being penitent and open about one's sins. Bennett, clearly, has embraced that virtue. Who better, really, than a self-admitted sinner to talk of the foolishness of sin? Yes, let us not listen to the adulterer's indictments against the sin he denies he commits. But surely we can, and should, listen to the men and women who are transparently candid about their active participation in darkness.

Oliphant and others of his ilk, sadly, are attempting to besmirch a man of integrity by using casual references to the stains on his suit to intimate that he is unfit to recognize dirt. Shame, shame, shame.

Of course, all this is moral posturing by Mr. Oliphant and others so as to avoid the issues Mr. Bennett has the intellectual vigor to examine publicly. Oliphant would not dare undertake an examination of race and abortion, nor would he dare consider that his support of abortion is a quiet program of keeping blacks from procreating. That sort of thing would be indecent: the bow-tied Oliphant would not want to indulge in any improprieties.

[If you think that I am making too much of this, let me point out that MSNBC has a poll on its website showing that (as of this moment) 64% of 15,217 voters believe Bennett's remarks were "reprehensible." That there is even ONE person who thinks so proves that the education system in America has failed miserably. We should definitely blame that on the former Education Secretary.]

Indeed, we all believe in the No Child Left Behind Act: We all hope that no child is left behind. But we hope this despite the opinions of 10,000 people who probably should have been left behind.

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Photo: Cow Lick - Jaffrey, NH. Camera: Canon T90 Lens: Canon EF 20/2.8. Film: Fujichrome 100 Exposure: 1/500 @ 5.6 This picture is the first image I ever sold to the Associated Press. Just thought you'd like to know. Click on it for a larger view.