Parse This: Bill Bennett

George W. Bush and Bill Bennett in happier times

Conservative pundits often say mean things, but seldom do they go so far as to say what they really mean.

At rare moments, however, the mask of civility slips off, and the public is offered a glimpse of the ghastly, pock-marked face that lies beneath the smooth surface of the conservative movement.

Then the mask is quickly put back in place, and followed up with countless photo-ops and explanations of what the pundit really meant to say.

That is exactly what happened a few days ago, when former Republican Education Secretary Bill Bennett suggested on his radio show that America would be a safer place if all black babies in this country were aborted. And I quote:

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. 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.

Who ever said conservatives weren’t compassionate?

Bennett’s statement, which he now says was hypothetical (or, to use his own language, “a thought experiment about public policy”), is so clear, and so forthright, that it needs no parsing.

That, at least, is what I thought when I first read it. But I see that my new friends on The Corner would disagree with me — Jonah Goldberg calls this “a silly, manufactured, attack on Bennett. Maybe he could have phrased it differently, but the point he made is rational . . .”

Of course, the rationality of the point depends on what your definition of “rational” is. Personally, I don’t think that conducting involuntary mass abortions on the basis of race is a very rational solution to the problem of crime in this country, but what do I know — I’m just one of those kooky bloggers, not a former U.S. Secretary of Education with a nationally syndicated radio show and a “philosophy professor’s hat.”

At any rate, though the import of Bennett’s words are clear to most of us, the spin he uncorked after a controversy broke out is a little bit harder to follow.

In fact, it is so convoluted that it has sparked the return of the hottest craze sweeping the nation. Yes, my friends, I speak of Parse This!™, an exciting game of literary exegesis in which contestants attempt to unpack the opaque utterances of public figures.

Now, before I reveal today’s quote, allow me to set the stage: Bill Bennett has just been accused of uttering bizarre and racist statements. The President’s spokesperson has said that George W. Bush “believes the comments were not appropriate.” But Fox News gives Bennett a chance to appear on Hannity and Colmes in order to explain himself and put his words “in context.”

And this is what he said:

Well, the context was a radio show that I was doing yesterday, and the topic was abortion and we were talking about bad arguments in regard to abortion. A caller suggested he was opposed to abortion because he said if there were more babies there would be, eventually, more tax payers and a larger GNP, a smaller deficit. I said you want to be careful with that kind of argument because someone could postulate a situation where child’s not likely to be a productive taxpayer. I said, arguments in which you take something that’s far out, like the GNP and try to connect it up with abortion are tricky. I said make the case of abortion on the basis of life and protecting life. I said abortion is invoked in another way; you could make an argument that if you wanted to lower the crime rate, you saw the quote; you could practice abortion in very large numbers. You could do it in the black community; you could do it in other places. This is, by the way, the subject of a book for economics by a professor at Yale.

I feel like Bennett is saying something here, but I have no idea what it is. Can you help out? Please, Parse This™!