Bill Bennett, Leninist

Reed Hundt writes about Bill Bennett:

TPMCafe || A true story about Bill Bennett : When I was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (1993-97), I asked Bill Bennett to visit my office so that I could ask him for help in seeking legislation that would pay for internet access in all classrooms and libraries in the country.... More than 90% of all teachers praise the impact of such technology on their work....

[S]ince Mr. Bennett had been Secretary of Education I asked him to support the bill in the crucial stage when we needed Republican allies. He told me he would not help, because he did not want public schools to obtain new funding, new capability, new tools for success. He wanted them, he said, to fail so that they could be replaced with vouchers, charter schools, religious schools, and other forms of private education. Well, I thought, at least he's candid about his true views.

The key Senate committee voted almost on party lines on the bill, all D's for and all R's against, except one -- Olympia Snowe. Her support provided the margin of victory. On the House side, Speaker Gingrich made sure the provision was not in the companion bill, but in conference again Senators Snowe and Rockefeller, with White House support, made the difference. The Internet has been the first technology made available to students in poorly funded schools at about the same time and in about the same way as to students in well funded schools.

Did Lenin ever really say, "the worse, the better"?

Comments

[save_the_rustbelt]

This story is just a little too cute, a little too obvious, and fits the stereotype just a little too closely.

So do we believe everything we read in a blog?

[John Emerson]

Certainly we shouldn't take comments by "Save the Rustbelt" at face value!

Hundt was in a position to know, and that's what he says. So if there's a problem it isn't about "blogs", it's about Hundt.

[JRoth]

Just to make clear: save-the-rustbelt is calling Reed Hundt a liar. He used some cloying language, but there is no other meaning to his comment than that. Respected public servant Reed Hundt is relating an event that happened to him. Either what he says happened, happened, or Reed Hundt is a liar. And save-the-rustbelt doesn't think it happened. And his/her only evidence is that, well, he/she doesn't like the story. Don't believe what you see in blogs, indeed.

[sasha]

I think it was Trotsky who said that. Or at least it is a characteristic of many of the various Trotsyite sects to hold that the more the working class is oppressed the more likely it is to rise up.

Lenin was much more of the opinion that by fighting against stuff like the gutting of the Endangered Species Act or for stuff like civil rights, the working class gets a sense of its own power.

That's the way it's interpreted these days, anyway.

[realist]

bennett would have toed the republican line, and bennett's papers and speeches extolling the virtures of religious and home schooling can be found easily on most search engines. the story is certainly believable.

anyone who comes out against bennett, risks the chance of being publicly eviserated on his talk show. hundt showed a great deal of testicularity to have come out with the story at all.

[Charles]

Professor J. Bradford DeLong says that the saying is Leninist
(econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/Slouch_Purge15.html)

Is that good enough of a source?

[Brad DeLong]

Re: "Professor J. Bradford DeLong says that the saying is Leninist
(econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/Slouch_Purge15.html)

Is that good enough of a source?"

No.

[Davis X. Machina]

"...Bennett would have toed the republican line"

Shorter Bill Bennett: "Wenn ich 'Public' höre... entsichere ich meinen Browning."

[pebird]

Lets see, wanting public schools to fail, aborting black babies - I'm starting to see a theme.

Of course, wanting public schools to fail wouldn't be morally reprehensible.

[Matt]

Note in passing... 'Worse is better' arguments are a sign of deep intellectual corruption. Worse is worse.

[J Thomas]

"Note in passing... 'Worse is better' arguments are a sign of deep intellectual corruption. Worse is worse."

Yes. So for example we should do whatever we can to get the iraq fiasco ended, even though at the moment it's one of the worst things for the Republican party.

It isn't true that what's bad for the GOP is good for the country. Sometimes we have to do what we can to bail the perpetrators out, because what they've done is just too bad for the country.

[piotr]

I am not sure if Lenin had an occasion to phrase the principle. A typical occasion would be a conflict between revolutionary socialists (or Communists) and reformist socialists as to whether support reforms of burgouis state in the parliament, which is a not an issue for Bolsheviks in Russia but without a doubt was an issue that they had to have a position on.

Trotskists would be more involved in it because of their tactic of inflitrating reformist socialist parties. I recall dimly that their phrase was "highten the contradictions", but "the worse the better" has roughly the same meaning.

Active hightening of the contradictions is very analogous to efforts to fullfil the condition for the Second Comming.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Assuming Bennett did say this, can we conclude immediately that he is wrong?

Bassed on my experienced with public schools the past two decades I not certain he would be wrong.

My children suffered through public schools, my grandchildren never will. We are going to pretend we are rich, white liberal Democrats and keep our grandchildren away from public schools.

[Rob]

Ah, so even thought this isn't true, save teh rustbelt has no problem with it. See some children have bad public schools. Therefore all public schools should be made bad! We should hurt as many children as possible in order to get our way! Well as long as they are other people's children...

[John Emerson]

My son, nieces, and nephews, 11 in all, did well in public schools in four different states. The nihilistic proposals of Bennett and our STR here would have done them harm.

Actually replacing the "failing schools" with something better is harder than just trashing public education, but the Bennetts don't really want that. They just want Godly socially-conservative schools which don't teach evolution.

The superiority of private and church schools is exaggerated, and the more parents switch over to private schools, the smaller that advantage will become.

[me]

A troll said "So do we believe everything we read in a blog?"
Certainly not anything you write!

can we conclude immediately that he is wrong?"

You want to BET?

[Julian Elson]

Just to make clear: Brad DeLong is calling Professor J. Bradford DeLong a liar. He used some concise language, but there is no other meaning to his comment than that. Respected public servant J. Bradford DeLong is relating a Lenin quote. Either what he says happened, happened, or J. Bradford DeLong is a liar. And Brad DeLong doesn't think it happened. And his only evidence is that, well, he doesn't like the quote. Don't believe what you see in blogs, indeed.

[Howdy]

So we're discussing what Bill Bennett said and people are, you know,
going
through their various stages of shock and outrage, whatever it is, and
people are, I'm sure, having their own thoughts about this. The thing that
amazes me is, we all get caught up in words and what people say and get
righteously indignant. "How dare that person say that! Who do you think they
are?" Of course, it's all within these confines of political correctness.
Okay. So Bennett is having a theoretical, philosophical discussion with a
caller about abortion, and the caller is making the point that, "Hey, you
know, if all these kids that have been aborted in the last 30 years had not
been and had been born, a good number of them would have become productive
members of society. They would have become taxpayers. We would have had that
much more money in the federal treasury and we might be not having a Social
Security problem or anything else," and Bennett said, you know, you can go
so many ways on that and it gets tricky. You can talk if you abort here, if
you don't abort there, but that's not the way to talk about abortion. We've
got to talk about it on the issue of morality. It's life. It's wrong to
abort innocent life, pure and simple.

He's just following the lead of his caller and in the midst of his answer
to the caller, he said, "Well, you know, it's true, if you aborted every
black baby, you'd reduce the crime rate." He said, "That would be crazy,
it's reprehensible, morally indefensible. It's silly." You don't go there.
There's shock and outrage. "How dare he say that? How dare he say it?" Who
cares what anybody says? It's only political correctness that's gotten into
this place. What about those who are doing that, folks? What about those who
are doing it? Is talking about abortion, regardless what's said about it,
worse than the act itself? Where's the equal condemnation here? How in the
world are we going to sit around and get all worked up and bent out of sorts
over words, when abortion is happening to the tune of 1.3 million a year and
has been for 30 years? Planned Parenthood? Many of you think it's a grand
organization, very worthwhile, doing great work. Margaret Sanger, founder of
Planned Parenthood, called for the sterilization of "genetically inferior
races" in 1939. Who was she talking about? You don't have to ask. I'll tell
you. In 1939, she organized the Negro Project, and wrote, "The poorer areas,
particularly in the South, are producing alarmingly more than their share of
future generations," hence, she called for the sterilization of "genetically
inferior races." Margaret Sanger was the founder of the National Birth
Control League, now known as Planned Parenthood.

She was an advocate of eugenics, improving human population by control of
hereditary factors in reproduction. There was a big eugenics movement in
this country back in this era, in the '30s and they wanted to pick who could
"mate." They wanted to determine who could have children and who couldn't,
and it was based on IQ and a number of other things. They didn't want to
mess around with all these inferior races and inferior groups and inferior
intellects mass producing out there and creating a bunch of idiots that were
going to live off the federal dime or whatever. Now, you can't even say this
about Margaret Sanger anymore. Planned Parenthood says, "You are
misrepresenting what our founders said!" No, I'm not. Take a look at it.
Now, I'm not saying that the Planned Parenthood movement today is a carbon
copy of Margaret Sanger's ideas, but we do know that Planned Parenthood's
primary objective in life is to abort as many babies as possible regardless
of the color. Now, you tell me, folks, where is the sense here in getting
all upset over the words uttered by somebody -- when they're taken out of
context when you first hear about them; hat's the only way you about them
and they're taken out of context -- you get all upset. "I can't believe
anybody would say that." Well, I frankly can't believe anybody, like a
doctor in Arkansas, would actually ask black evacuees from Hurricane Katrina
to come to his office for abortions. Where is our sense of proportion here?
Like I say, I'm through going on the defensive with these bunch of people
who claim to be superior and morally and intellectually above everybody
else. They're the elites? (RL)

[Michael McIntyre]

I don't think either Comrade Bernstein or Comrade Ulyanov ever endorsed the phrase "the worse, the better." (See note 12 of http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2004/Caplanidea.html#references; in a similar google search of Trotsky's works on http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works, I similarly found only derisory uses of the phrase).

Ulyanov did once title a work, "Better Fewer, but Better." (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/mar/02.htm)

[Ralph]

In contrast to rust_belt I can readily believe that this exchange actually took place. Wasn't Bill Bennett in favor of abolishing the Dept of Education while he was there? Back to the most recent controversy over Bennett's remarks about how the country can reduce the crime wave in the future by having a black fetus abortion program. I consider this an advocacy for ethnic cleansing American-style something that hasn't been attempted in some time.

[Gareth]

Neither Trotsky nor Lenin said it, and neither of them opposed what they thought were pro-working class reforms on the grounds they would make the revolution more likely. Maybe Bordiga.

[Charles]

Julian Elson, aren't you being just a little bit harsh on DeLong?

I think he claims to be an economist, not a historian, and as such, deserves a bit of slack.

Sources on the web say that "the worse, the better" was Leninist in origin. However, I suspect that it's a traditional Russian saying that was taken over by the Bolsheviks to comfort people with dreams of future glory in what were pretty awful times.

I don't have the slightest evidence for believing that.

[aretino]

Funny, just this week I told my (Republican) manager that he was really a Leninist.

I had pointed out to him that Republican tax cuts and spending increases will bankrupt the government. He replied that this was a good thing.

"So," I said, "you take the Leninist position -- the worse, the better."

"Yes," he answered.

Remember that next time you want to believe there is a sane, decent majority of Republican rank-and-filers that will some day take their party back from the criminals and scoundrels who have stolen it.

[J Thomas]

Aretino, there could be a sane decent majority of Republicans, or at least a sane decent large minority. Your manager just didn't happen to be among them.

I think it's important to get some idea how many of them there are, and perhaps those numbers could be estimated by something like push-polling. I think my old father is one. He believes what he sees on TV, or at least he disbelieves everything else, and when he discusses politics with me he assumes I believe a lot of disreputable sources. I offered to send him a link to the Downing Street memo and he wasn't interested. If it was real and important it would have already have been reported on the news.

I figure he might help take his party back from the criminals when the media tells him to. Although he isn't really a republican, it's just he's voted republican pretty much every time since Nixon. He didn't particularly like Bush but it was obvious that Kerry was worse, and Gore was just nothing. And of course Clinton was bad, and so on. If a democrat ran who got good media attention he might likely vote for him.

[JRoth]

Actually, Charles, Julian was attempting to mock my strong comments up top against STR. The flaw in his comparison - obvious for all to see - is that STR was questioning Hundt's reportage of an event at which he was present. Unless DeLong's past is rather different from what he has suggested, he was not present when Lenin said - or did not say - "the worse, the better." Sorry, Julian.

[Charles]

Thanks for cueing me in, JRoth.

It's not always easy to understand the intent of a post lacking the aural and visual cues of normal speech, especially given the high noise level.