Bennett and the Babies

I came across William Saletan's human nature submission on Bill Bennett's statement about abortion and black babies. I think its clear that Bennett was proposing a straw man in order to knock it down. When you create a straw man, you mean it to get knocked down. He created a case against utilitarian arguments against abortion so obsene no one would be willing to cling to it. That is why he followed up with "ridiculous and morally reprehensible." People who took Bennett's straw man argument seriously are apparently unable to distinguish between the two. John McWhorter's line about this was, "Mr. Bennett, actually, was rejecting a possible defense of his own pro-life position. He was demonstrating thoughtful nuance. I assume that the rest of us, black and white, can too. " Jonah Goldberg offers "The former philosophy professor picked a hypothetical that he thought would make the horror of such utilitarianism obvious to everybody. [...] Bennett's real mistake was in thinking people would be mature enough to get it."