You're on a tear today.

Bennett's hypothetical is rationally unassailable: if you kill them before they can commit crime and you will get less crime. But Bennett is not a rationalist and therefore went on to argue that the good of lower crime can't justify the evil action of abortion. Ironic that he is castigated by rationalists who justify abortion. Still more amazing is that there are black voices among the chorus.

I don't know why, but I had never made the connection between Europe's lower crime rate and lack of young people until now. Now that you've pointed it out, it's embarassingly obvious. Thanks.

Is that why Utah is the crime capital of the US and Florida has such a low crime rate?

h:

Ethnic homogeneity works too--if you murdered all the non-white non-Lutherans in America we'd have crime rates as low as Scandanavia--well, other than the couple hundred million murders--and just as dismal a future.

what is wrong with having kids in your teens? assuming that you are married and have finished high school?

assume those two things and nothing's the matter, except the assumption.

I, of course, was not suggesting murder or abortion (which Bennett wasn't either, if you read his whole statement). However if African-Americans decided to reunite with their brethren in Africa, like Abraham Lincoln and Stokely Carmichael(Kwame Ture) wanted them to then America would perhaps have less crime. (as well as dismal prospects in football, basketball, baseball)

That paper is a shining example of the utter intellectual bankrupcy of the modern social sciences. Methinks the referee's response should have been quite easy to write: "Correlation is not causation. The paper is rejected."

Speaking of the wonders of Europe, I'm stunned you haven't posted about this yet, oj: http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/301

I think Steve Sailer and James Q. Wilson debunked the Freakonomics thing a while ago.

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2005/06/james-q-wilson-reviews-levitts.html

I have been told by people who should know, policemen and public health workers, that often one may spot the really bad, dangerous neighborhoods by the presence of dead trees.

It sounds so strange, but here's how it works. In neighborhoods with a high degree of social pathology, children are unsupervised. Such children have nothing better to do than to scrape the bark from sidewalk trees with whatever they have in their hands, so the trees die. As the children grow, they move on to using sharp objects and other impliments on faster-moving targets.

As to what Bennett said, it one of those indisputable, indeniable, irrepressible truths. Bennnett recognized that our values make us recoil from taking life that is merely inconvenient. Destroy the values, and we are presented with an whole other set of issues.

h:

Cleansing, not extermination?

"cleansing, not extermination?"

No, people walking the walk, instead of talking the talk.

Levitt responds.

Legalizing abortion increased out of wedlock births.

carter:

No, it didn't. The family had already been broken by the time Roe was issued.

You may be right, I don't really know, but even if an ongoing trend of family breakdown was the main cause it seems as if legalization of abortion acted to accelerate the trend. See this:

http://www.brook.edu/comm/policybriefs/pb05.htm

Pat Moynihan's warning about the trend came some years before Roe:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_3_black_family.html

Monyihan's warning was issued when single-parent black families numbered about 25%. Today, the number is about 65%.

Will Harry Reid denounce me for mentioning it?

trend

There was a much reported study this week about how societies that don't believe in God are safer than those that do--all it left out is that the former are dying because they've made themselves safer by getting older and not replenishing their societies with young people.

The disparity in fertility rates between England, France, and the US is not great enough to justify your claim. And it doesn't account for statistics such as std rates for teenagers or out of wedlock births, as these are dependent on the number of people eligible for that condition, and not the total population.

The glaringly obvious fact is that the US continues to suffer high rates of socially dysfunctional behavior at the same time that it's population is aging, it's fertility rate has dropped to zpg levels, and it has become more religious over the last 4 decades. What exactly have we gained for all this religiosity?

The only thriving society in the West.

Define 'thriving'.

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html

When determining the types of people committing violent crimes or any other crimes committed, why is it that the single parent families always get drug in the dirt? Children "born out of wedlock" have just as much if not more family support that those with both parents. In marriage, out of marriage, that is not the issue. The issue is the lack of dicipline, guidance and consistency, in two words "Appropriate Parenting" Next time this survey is conducted find out the parenting strategies used on the crimminals. I read that teaching and playing board games with your children can lower the chances of going to prison. The majority of prisoners asked said they had never played board games. What I am getting at is try surveying from a different point of view. I bet if you tried you could find someone else to blame for the crimes being committed.

Kids born out of wedlock are less likely to be in board game playing families, no?