William Bennett

Douglas Wilson has some interesting comments on the recent William Bennett conflagration:

While recently walking in the meadows of public discourse, William Bennett stepped in the cow pie of truth. He mentioned that if evil, pragmatic outcomes were your only consideration, you could reduce crime by evil means.

and later:

Blacks are far more likely to be incarcerated than whites. That is the simple fact, and the basis of Bennett's hypothetical (and roundly condemned by Bennett) scenario. White racists attribute the difference in the incarceration rates to the genetic and hardwired attraction of blacks to crime. Liberals of various stripes blame various societal factors, like the "cycle of poverty" caused by society generally, and selective and prejudicial enforcement of the laws. But in that debate, both the liberals and the racists are talking about the same phenomenon, an indisputable phenomenon which it is apparently now hazardous to even mention.