Conservative pundit William J. Bennett is coming to the Richard Nixon Library and Museum Sunday to hawk the book he cowrote with John Cribb, The American Patriot's Alamanc. Bennett has written so many books that it's fun to contrast the titles with his own notoriety. For instance:
The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories (1993)
It's made public Bennett was a high-stakes gambler who lost millions in Vegas (2003)
Body Count: Moral Poverty . . . and How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs (1996)
While “czar” at the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Bennett was a cigarette smoker (1988)
The Educated Child: A Parent's Guide from Preschool through Eighth Grade (1999)
Transcript from Bennett's Morning in America radio show (2005):
- CALLER: I noticed the national media… talk a lot about the
loss of revenue… to fund Social Security, and I was curious, …
[whether] the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade [and] 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…
- BENNETT: Assuming they're all productive citizens?
- CALLER: …Even if only a portion of them were, it would be an enormous amount of revenue.
- BENNETT: Maybe,…but we don't know what the costs would be, too. I think [abortion] disproportionately occur[s] among single women? No?
- CALLER: I don't know the exact statistics, but quite a bit are, yeah.
- BENNETT: …I would not argue for the pro-life position
based on this… [I]t cuts both [ways]–you know. One of the arguments
in this book Freankonomics that they make is… 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,… But I do know
that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, 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.
The Broken Hearth: Reversing the Moral Collapse of the American Family (2001)
Bennett, reacting to the uproar over his “abort every black baby” comment on CNN (2005):
“A thought experiment about public policy, on national radio, should
not have received the condemnations it has. Anyone paying attention to
this debate should be offended by those who have selectively quoted me,
distorted my meaning, and taken out of context the dialog I engaged in
this week. Such distortions from 'leaders' of organizations and parties
is a disgrace not only to the organizations and institutions they
serve, but to the First Amendment.”
To see the First Amendment crusader in action in Yorba Linda, go here.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.