Taranto delivers a metaphysical beat-down to arch-nazipansy David Brock and his hired goons.

Thanks to Best of the Web Today for putting this particular kerfuffle out of its misery.

Forbidden Thoughts
Bill Bennett is standing firm in the face of an attack launched by David Brock's foul MediaMatters.org site. In a week-end roundup, MM clarified what it found invidious about Bennett's comments regarding abortion, crime and race, which we analyzed Friday (italics in original, boldface ours):

Bennett and his defenders have seized on Bennett's original statement that it would be "impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible" to actually abort all black babies. But that isn't the issue; of course everyone understands that Bill Bennett doesn't want to abort all black babies. The issue is that Bennett, upon thinking "crime rate," immediately thought of black people. The issue is that Bennett thinks and speaks of crime as an issue of race.

Here we see the totalitarian mindset of the politically correct left. "The issue," it turns out, isn't just what Bennett said but what Bennett thinks. Yes, MediaMatters is accusing Bill Bennett of thoughtcrime. It's "1984," and Big Brock is watching. Fortunately, Brock and his force are more Keystone Kops than Thought Police, and therefore this column, like Bennett, is not afraid to entertain some forbidden thoughts.

It is a fact that blacks in America have a far higher violent crime rate than nonblacks. MediaMatters and politically correct folks everywhere do not want you to think about this fact, at least if you are white. But which is a bigger problem, the fact itself or white people's thinking about it?

To explore that question, consider the practical implications of the high black crime rate. If you are white, it affects you only insofar as you come into contact with black people. Whites often respond to their knowledge of the higher black crime rate by engaging in what we might term defensive stereotyping, or what some have called "rational discrimination": avoiding black neighborhoods, crossing the street to avoid an approaching black man, etc.

Importantly, to say that such discrimination is "defensive" or "rational" does not mean it is harmless. Many an innocent black man has been insulted, inconvenienced or worse by such stereotyping. That is why "racial profiling" by law-enforcement agencies is problematic even if it is an effective anticrime tactic.

But the implications of the high black crime rate are much more significant to the average black man:

He is subject, in his encounters with whites, to the stereotyping we have just described.

He is more likely to be a criminal, and thus more likely to be incarcerated and to suffer all the other disadvantages that come with having a "record."

He is more likely to be the victim of violent crime, since most crime is intraracial.

He is more likely to have a father, son, brother or other relative who is a criminal or a victim of violent crime.

At least the last two of these points apply to black women as well.

Now, as long as we are living dangerously, let us conduct a thought experiment of our own. Suppose that all whites stopped thinking of crime in racial terms--that is, that their minds were washed clean of any knowledge about racially disparate crime rates. Would this be good for black people?

Perhaps it would, up to a point. It would solve the first of the four problems we've listed--that is, it would ease their encounters with whites by doing away with stereotypes based on crime rates. But it would leave untouched the underlying problem of crime in the black community. And that problem would be harder to deal with if a majority of the American population were unable even to acknowledge its existence and thus to think about how to solve it.

When white liberals berate white nonliberals for thinking about crime in racial terms, then, they are not acting in a way that actually promises to improve the lives of blacks. Rather, they are showing off their own putative moral superiority. And how seriously can we take even their implicit claims that they do not think of crime in racial terms? Is David Brock any more likely than Bill Bennett to take a midnight stroll through Anacostia? Color us skeptical.