Defending Bill Bennett
Brad DeLong begins a very intellectually honest defense of accusations that former Education Secretary and drug tsar Bill Bennett is a racist thusly:
Bill Bennett is a hypocrite, a loathsome fungus on the tree of American politics, a man who has worked unceasingly to make America a worse place–when he’s not publishing the work of others under his own name, or rolling the dice at Las Vegas while claiming that America’s poor would be rich if only they had the righteousness and moral fiber than he does. But Bill Bennett is not afflicted with genocidal fantasies about ethnically cleansing African-Americans.
While I disagree on DeLong’s assessment of Bennett’s character, that’s pretty funny.
He closes the post with several maxims that should be heeded by all:
[N]ever get involved in a land war in Asia; do not read My Pet Goat when death is on the line; never play poker with a man named ‘Doc’; never accept a battle of wits where iocane powder is a factor; never blithely download and install a file from Microsoft without carefully, carefully researching what it will do beforehand; never get involved in an argument over Noam Chomsky; and never post about human genetics on you weblog.
Sound advice, indeed.
Why is it the right doesn’t mimic the left and also do a personal attack de jour?
They are clever, even if all their accusations are false, because they dominate the news and present a false image of conservative evil and (a culture of corruption). It is a war we are losing by default.
Perhaps we need to label them as having 3-D vision : divide, deceive, distrust!
Pick your own motto. Perhaps this website could have a contest?
Mr. DeLong should cut back on the caffeine, stick to Berkeley economics and shun attempts at mindreading, and see his physician about a reduction in those “stuck on stupid” pills he’s taking.
The disgusting part of this charade, on the part of the attack dogs from hell, is that they, the elite, the educated superior beings, know full well that Bennett was merely using an example of how wrong someone else’s thinking was by taking it to the extreme. Learned people and educated individuals have used this technique for centuries-and they know that. They need to be called for being deceitful or ignorant! Sadly it is the former that frames their lack of character!
I think Bennets example would have made more sense if he had advocating aborting Republican babies instead of black babies. We all know there is far more white collar crime than there is violent crime.
But I doubt if DL would be as defensive of Bennet in that case.
In case any one is wondering why Delong included the warning to never post about human genetics on your weblog all you need do is look here for the incident that burned Prof. DeLong.