Moral Outrage 101

Another lesson in modern moral outrage: Bill Bennett, Reagan's Secretary of Education, has stated that if we aborted every black fetus, the crime rate would go down. Actually, the crime rate would go up, because genocide is a crime.
Bennett did say that "That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down." This is how the extremely well off tend to think. Well, the conservative extremely well off at least. It's a misapplication of an equals sign in their mental schema. "Poor=Black" and "Poor=Criminal" are two overregulated ideas. Yes, non-white are over represented in the poor population, just as whites are over represented in the rich population.
I am glad that he at least knows how impossible, ridiculous, and reprehensible his idea is. He may claim that he was referring to an idea discussed in a book called Freakonomics, which (if I recall) talks about how crazy the right wing economic policies are. Of course, the original idea was about the poor, not blacks. Most of the baser crimes are committed by poorer people, or at least poorer people can't get the legal assistance to be aquitted when they commit a crime, so the misapplication of that mental equals sign labels all poor as blacks and criminals.