Bill Bennett is a racist idiot

Brad De Long came to the defense of Bennett the other day, agreeing with Bennett's claim that he was merely making a "reductio ad absurdum argument." (Swift's, "why don't the Irish eat their young?" was reductio ad absurdum.) Sorry, Brad. Bennett doesn't get off that easy. What Bennett actually said was: "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." This came immediately after he disputed the claim that aborting unwanted babies reduces crime.
Think about that for a minute. He does not believe that aborting unwanted babies reduces crime, but he is certain that aborting black babies would do so.
And even if he is merely trying to use an absurd argument to make a non-racist point, he is still using a racist argument to make a non-racist point. Why does he single out black babies to make his absurd argument? Why not simply say that you could abort all babies and totally eliminate crime? That would have made his non-racist point better and would not have raised charges of racism. The reason is simple. He singled out African-Americans because he is a racist. He singled out African-Americans because he really does believe that they are the root cause of much of the crime in this country. And he singled out African-Americans because it is a staple of the right-wing play book to appeal to the racist tendencies of their audiences.
P.S. Today, Brit Hume of Fox news kept asking: "what did he say that was false?" What an idiot.