Saletan's Hypocrisy

In his Slate article "Natural Unborn Killers: The bigotry of Bill Bennett's low expectations," William Saletan enunciates what has become the fallback position for those wanting to crucify Bill Bennett. Saletan writes:

Is it morally acceptable to predict the criminal propensity of unborn children based on the color of their skin? That's what former education secretary and drug czar Bill Bennett did last Wednesday on his radio show.

No, that's not what Bennett was doing. He was making a statistical prediction about the criminal propensity of (a large group of) unborn children based on the behavior of their parents.

That's what everybody does in their personal lives.

How many times do you think Mr. Saletan has talked to a young couple who are planning to have children and they are searching for a suburb with public schools where their children will be safe from violence and surrounded by academically-oriented peers? But, notice, none of these potential future classmates that the prospective parents are so concerned about ... have been born yet!

If Mr. Saletan told the couple that they could pick up a cheap house on Martin Luther King Drive, they'd look at him funny for a minute and then probably think he was referring to Chris Rock's famous joke:

"If a friend calls you on the telephone and says they're lost on Martin Luther King Boulevard and they want to know what they should do, the best response is ‘Run!’”

What would they say if Mr. Saletan then told them that it is not "morally acceptable to predict the criminal propensity of unborn children based on the color of their skin?"

They'd probably tell him to go raise his children on MLK Drive.

In the unlikely event that Mr. Saletan wouldn't then slink away in shame, but persisted and demanded to know whether they think there is a genetic cause for why children tend to be like parents, they'd probably reply that they aren't scientists or sociologists, and there are probably lots of reasons kids tend to be like their parents, but what they do know is that they are going to play the odds and do what's safest for their future children. And if that means making predictions of the behavior of unborn children based on the behavior of their parents, so be it.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer