Demagogue

Former Secretary of Education, author of The Book of Virtues and The Death of Outrage, and general all-around annoying person William Bennett illustrated once again that you can smugly preach virtue to everyone else, but it doesn't mean you're virtuous yourself.

He's been criticized for remarks he made on his radio show, and his defense of those remarks was completely disingenuous. Apparently, some people in his audience yesterday were dim enough to be bamboozled, but Bennett is too intelligent and too adept at the use of language not to know that he was being dishonest.

Yes, Bill, we understand that you "shot down" the argument you were putting forth. But that's not the point, and you know it. Here's what Bennett said, essentially:

1. If we aborted all the black babies, we'd have less crime.
2. You could say that we should therefore abort all the black babies.
3. But we shouldn't do that, because abortion is wrong.

Bennett knows that #3 shouldn't get him off the hook for #1. The problem isn't that he advocates aborting black babies; everyone knows, as Bennett put it, that he "shot down" that argument. In other words, he doesn't believe in proposition #2. The problem is with proposition #1.

Anyone who still doesn't get it should compare this hypothetical. What if someone said:

1. If we sterilized all the Catholics, world population growth would slow.
2. You could say that we shold therefore sterilize all the Catholics.
3. But we shouldn't do that, because forced sterilization is wrong.

Use your imagination; I'm sure you can come up with similar examples for gays and AIDS or Jews and rapacious international banks.

The point in all these cases is that you're still blaming a society-wide problem on a disfavored minority; you're just magnanimous enough to say that extermination is too harsh a punishment for their crime.