I was prompted, a couple of years ago, to wonder about this:
"Under the regime that gave free rein to history's most poisonous and
perverse misreadings of Darwinian theory, that of Nazi Germany, 'habitual
criminals' were among the estimated five million victims of the Shoah over
and above the six million Jews. Among this heterogeneous group - Gypsies,
homosexuals, political enemies, so-called physical or mental 'degenerates',
and social misfits that in other times might have been accused of witchcraft
- the 'habitual criminals' are perhaps the least frequently mentioned. If we
can assume that these people were accurately identified (which of course is
not the same thing as suggesting that they merited their fate), does modern
Germany benefit from this policy by possessing an unusually low crime rate?
No. According to the comparison of international crime statistics produced
by the UN's Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, New Zealand had
11,152 crimes for every 100,000 people in the year 2000, England and Wales
had 9,766 (Scotland isn't listed), America 8,517 [1999 figures], South
Africa 7,997, Germany 7,621, France 6,403, Italy 3,822, Spain 2,337, Russian
Federation 2,022, and Japan 1,923. Varying criteria as well as other
methodological differences compromise the reliability of comparisons made on
the basis of these figures.
(http://www.odccp.org/odccp/crime_cicp_survey_seventh.html, accessed 7/3/03)
"
P
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to
> poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Ken Wolman
> Sent: 30 September 2005 18:53
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Dr. Morality weds Dr. Laura
>
> Stephen Vincent wrote:
>
> >William Bennett - former Bush Cabinet Secretary of Education
> or was it
> >Morals? - yesterday, on his syndicated radio program
> -declared that to
> >abort Black babies would reduce the rate and cost of crime
> in the United States.
> >
> I confess I did not believe you and thought you overreading
> until I read the Times. My apologies. It seems that even
> the White House is distancing itself from Bennett, who is
> outdoing Dr. Laura for hypocrisy bordering on the
> pathological. From the Times--
>
> > He went on to call that ''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.''
> >
> > Responding later to criticism, Bennett said his comments had been
> > mischaracterized and that his point was that the idea of supporting
> > abortion to reduce crime was ''morally reprehensible.''
> >
> Given that there was a length documentary on PBS last night
> about the 1960s, including Vietnam, I can only think of the
> words applied to both LBJ and Nixon and reapply them to
> Bennett even if the context doesn't perfectly match: "Pull
> out like your father should have."
>
> Ken
>
> --
> Kenneth Wolman
> Proposal Development Department
> Room SW334
> Sarnoff Corporation
> 609-734-2538
>
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