Editorial

It’s reasonable to expect, from a former secretary of education, thoughtful and measured pronouncements on serious subjects such as Social Security, or child development, or even crime rates. So therefore it is entirely reasonable to expect that a former education secretary under President Ronald Reagan, who then moved on to became America’s drug czar under the first President George Bush, would wax eloquent on the radio in a talk show format.

Dr. William J. Bennett, PhD from the University of Texas in ‘political philosophy’ and Juris Doctorate from Harvard, is our talk show speaker. One would think that his comments would ring with an author’s depth, a high official’s tenor, and a scholar’s wisdom.

But ever the conservative, Mr. Bennett, like so many current and former GOP officials, has become increasingly reactionary over the years, and this past week he indulged himself by postulating a radical response to a call-in listener’s remarks.

Perhaps, like other GOP radicals, Dr. Bennett now feels that the American political game has been won; the radical ‘conservative’ Republicans control the White House, both Houses of Congress, and now will dominate the Supreme Court with the new Chief Justice John Roberts and the upcoming appointment of a replacement for Sandra Day O’Connor. They already have ideological stalwarts on the court – Justice Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas – so it must appear to the true GOP radicals that a bloodless right-wing coup has taken place and will not be easily undone.

That may be why Bill Bennett, doctor of philosophy and Harvard educated lawyer, may have felt free to engage in the worst sort of language, revealing the most damning sort of political thought! Dr. Bennett suggested that if all the black babies born in America were to be aborted, there would be less crime.

That was what he said.

Specifically, he said: "But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that was your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."

Mr. Bennett quickly said that would be "an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do," and then reaffirmed that, nonetheless, if that was done "your crime rate would do down."

So he tried to soften this racist holocaust with salving words and in doing so, he repeated the basic dictum: the crime rate would drop.

Yes, it does appear that he was really trying to win an argumentative point with a caller, and the suggestion regarding black genocide was supposedly not an actual posture; it was, Mr. Bennett now claims, a rhetorical device to make a point. However, anyone who was listening or who reads a full transcript of the verbal exchange, will find that Mr. Bennett went to great lengths to introduce that bizarre eugenics argument into the dialogue. He sounds like he couldn’t wait to press home his point.

Unfortunately, the ultimate aim of the point seems to unequivocally slam home the assumption that black people are at the root of most American crime, whether philosopher and lawyer Bennett wants to directly own up to that assertion or not.

So what’s the harm, really?

The harm is deep, sharp and reaches right to the conservative man, Mr. Bennett, who complained in one of his own writings that English words were being butchered, and more precision in language is needed. Mr. Bennett seems to have attained that precision, and it is in fact a major problem for the radical right, because one of its own has apparently dropped his mask. People can now see and begin to understand how the radical right’s viewpoints are very similar to those of the Nazi’s.

Fascism has constant common denominators.

Oh, Bill Bennett has written and written at length about how a child should be taught the basics, the virtues. He has had books entitled as follows: "Book of Virtues," "The Children’s Book of Virtues," "Moral Compass: Stories for a Life’s Journey," "The Children’s Book of Heroes," "The Educated Child: A Parents Guide from Preschool Through Eighth Grade," "The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals," "The Broken Hearth: Reversing the Model Collapse of the American Family," and with a co-author, "Body Count: Moral Poverty … and How to Win America’s War Against Crime and Drugs" and many more.

The University of Texas’ doctor of philosophy was selling his newest book, ironically entitled, "Book of Virtues," when he dared to suggest that fascistic eugenics and genocidal politics, using mass abortions for a political purpose, might be a solution to crime in America.

But, he cries, it was just a verbal joust.

No!

It was definitely not; William Bennett knows his words because he has made much of his living from writing books, and working with words and concepts, both as a lawyer and an administrator. He has of course shown the depth of that skill by having made a good deal of his money from talking on television, radio and in person.

He is a master of the word.

With a phrase or two, he has shown that he can level his verbal opponent.

But this time he didn’t level his call-in radio show guest, he extrapolated from the guest’s remarks to make some points of his own, and therefore he let the mask slip; he showed the world what is behind the GOP’s Christian Conservative radical right-wing.

Bill Bennett, long-time pillar of the right-wing, took a massive swipe at generations of black Americans, asserting that blacks as an ethnic group are largely responsible for the internal problems in America; he sought to find a perfect spot to dump all the major problems on the American plate onto blacks because of their skin color.

That is exactly what powerful Southern white people, and their reactionary Northern fellow travelers, have done for hundreds of years; that is, assert that blacks are somehow inferior.

In the olden days, whites employed this unholy philosophy out in the open and used it to justify slavery. White people owned black people.

Prior to the Civil War it was crime to let a black person learn to read. It was also important to keep their ancestry dead-ended. If they had no background, they couldn’t know themselves. In the same vein, they were usually discouraged from marriage, since it was possible they would be separated as commodities depending on markets and personal financial conditions of the slaveholder.

All of that remains a legacy that the South is still responsible for, and the North is as well for taking so long to contest it. Cultural bonds were bastardized by slavery in a way that as a nation we are still paying for today.

But what a sick joke it is to have a former education secretary and current author, scholar and dispenser of moral platitudes use black people as the brunt of his incredibly ugly and supercilious white humor; ha, ha, let’s point out that if there were no longer black children there would be less crime. Well, extrapolating further, once the blacks are removed it could then be said that if there were no longer any white children, there would be no crime at all. But fascistic thought never challenges its own ‘master’ race.

Perhaps the erudite and polished Mr. Bennett has forgotten that it was Charles Richard Drew, a black man, who discovered how to separate blood cells in order to create plasma, and therefore saved countless thousands of Americans and other allied soldiers during WWII, let alone the thousands, perhaps millions of civilian patients who have been similarly saved by the ability to have a transfusion.

We wonder if Mr. Bennett and his radical GOP cohorts even know of Dr. Drew, or of the incredible and disgusting fact that while he was the creator of the ‘blood bank,’ he died for lack of a transfusion after a North Carolina car accident in 1950, when he was first transported to a ‘white’s only’ hospital and refused a blood transfusion, and then died before he could be taken to a ‘black’s only’ North Carolina hospital. He died for lack of the precise treatment he created.

We wonder how many good North Carolina soldiers survived WWII because of plasma transfusions available because of Dr. Drew’s brilliance, and we wonder how the world would have been better served by following the doctrine of the philosophical Dr. Bennett, who is capable of suggesting that aborting black babies would lower the national crime rate.

Genocide is genocide, and eugenics is eugenics. Mr. Bennett has dropped his mask and revealed himself to be in league with fascistic and communistic totalitarians Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin, which should not be surprising to anyone with an understanding of right-wing politics. The difference between communist and fascist totalitarian doctrine is primarily one of financial degrees; it is the point where the left-wing and the right-wing touch, and there is only one principal difference: Communist totalitarians wish to control all aspects of society, including business and industry, while fascist totalitarians are willing to allow commercial enterprise – business and industry – to continue profitably in private hands.

Had Hitler and his racial purity doctrines – or Stalin’s political purity pogroms – succeeded in dominating the world, people like Charles Richard Drew would have been sublimated or would never have existed, and we as human beings would be impoverished because of that fact.

Mr. Bennett will of course huff and puff and call on all people to confirm that he was just using black people as an example. Yes, Mr. Bennett, you were. But you have inadvertently become a prime example of what is most dangerous in society, a sane zealot. And in this instance Mr. Bennett has become a paradigm for the current radical right-wing GOP that has captured the nation, and which is most visibly represented by George W. Bush, who through spokesmen recently called Bennett’s remarks "inappropriate."

We think that Pres. Bush’s temperate and low-key response is indicative of the problem facing the nation. Bennett’s remarks aren’t ‘inappropriate,’ they are outrageous. They contradict everything that the nation has stood for and fought for, over centuries.

That George W. Bush can blandly state, through spokesmen, that the comments were inappropriate can only lead to the conclusion that the current administration simply wishes the remarks hadn’t been made publicly.

There is no condemnation!

Mr. Bush, like Mr. Bennett, has revealed himself.

This is an example of the sludge that passes for government rhetoric and action under the current radical-right power brokers.

Fascism is on the move, and America is under assault.