Apparently, some on both sides of this "argument" are not getting my message; perhaps I'm not being shrill enough. However let me not be shrill, but blunt (as if that's ever been a problem before): I have no issue with what Mr. Bennett said. I said that I found it 'curious' that he used black babies for his example, but, once I thought it through, I understood it: black people have a higher crime rate that other segments of our society and aborting black children en masse would, indeed reduce the overall crime rate. Mr. Bennett's point, however, was that the ends do not justify the means and he used a monstrous example to hammer home his point.
Including Mr. Bennett in my lament at the state of rhetoric in this country was a slight bit of irrationality that we all have a twinge of when someone says something that's truthful but says it in a manner that's bound to stir up feces.
However, my main point was that the Big Media has created a climate in which Mr. Bennett's actual message can't get out without certain segments taking that message, twisting it to their own ends and turning into a tool that causes micro- and macro-divisions; among blood kin and among countrymen. Now that the original message has been twisted, fewer will listen to the actual message. The distorted, mutated message--undoubtedly unrecognizable to staunchly pro-life Mr. Bennett--is that Republicans are evil and racist.
And, that is what people like Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi and not a few leftist bloggers have wrought.
UPDATE: David Gillies at Daily Pundit despairs:
Jeff is right to bemoan the erosion of the idea of intentionality, i.e. the belief that a speaker uses words to convey his meaning, and that it is illegitimate to force one's own interpretation on those words. But intentions matter little in this era of attenuated political discourse. Can anything be done about the public's mayfly attention span, unwillingness to consider reasoned discourse, and the grievance-mongers' desire to exploit them? I'd like to think so. But I can't.
