Integral to the American concept of liberty is the right to hold the state at bay, which is why children are never too young to be taught to regard government employees with suspicion and defensive hostility. Some conscientious parents in Northampton, Massachusetts acted on that principle by demanding an end to a program intended to habituate public school inmates to the presence of police officers.

The local police department, acting on an initiative that originated with the International Association of Chiefs of Police, had dispatched officers to the local elementary school each week for an event called "High-Five Friday," in which students would exchange friendly greetings with cops (who, in practically any other context, would treat such physical contact as a felonious assault on an officer). Police Chief Jody Kasper explains that she thought "it was a great way to start building relationships with young kids."

That program was "paused" following complaints from a handful of parents who believe that it is the better part of wisdom to teach their children to avoid contact with the police, rather than seeking it out. In announcing the decision on its Facebook page, the department mentioned that "children of color, undocumented immigrant children or other children who may have had negative encounters with law enforcement" had expressed concerns about the program, which cued up the predictable reactions from the punitive populist faction.

"Why don't you toughen up out there in Northampton, all right?" eructated Bill O'Reilly, offering the jocular suggestion – at least, I think he was kidding – that the principal and the school board should be arrested. Minor-league talk radio personality Charlie Brennan insisted that "this is why Donald Trump's gonna get re-elected – stories like this."

A contributor to The New American magazine who serves as that publication's liaison to the white nationalist subculture snarked that "there's no more `safe space' for law-abiding citizens than when the police occupy part of it," and insisted that no true American could possibly object to having an armed, costumed stranger clothed in "qualified immunity" breathing down his neck.

"It's entirely understandable, for instance, that a child hailing from a Third World nation with corrupt police may feel apprehension at the sight of the men in blue," he patriot-splained. "But not that long ago people would have understood the proper response: You take the student aside and gently explain that the police visiting his school are there as friends."

"Some might also wonder about the parenting evident here," he continued in the style of a Soviet commissar tutoring parents about their duty to raise children in the fear and admonition of the state. "If your child has some irrational cop phobia, do you try and educate and change his mind? Or should you moan and groan and change all of society to accommodate irrationality?"

The "Caucasian leftists" and "minority" parents who complained about the police outreach program embody the "snowflake spirit of the age," concludes the TNA contributor, whose otherwise barren rhetorical pantry is well-stocked with clichés. To be fair, this story does expose a rather shocking failure on the part of parents in the community – that is, those who accepted the program with bovine docility, rather than expressing skepticism about it.

If it is "irrational" for parents to teach their children to be leery of police officers, why do police officers and prosecutors cultivate that attitude within their own children?

Every parent whose children have been sentenced to attend the Regime's mind-laundry should review the advice offered by Professor James Duane of Regent University Law School in his slender and indispensable book, You Have the Right to Remain Innocent.

Over the past several years, Professor Duane has made hundreds of presentations, each of which begins with an invitation to any audience members whose parents were police officers or prosecutors to share the advice they had been given by their parents about what they should do when the police what to talk with them.

"Every time this happens, without exception, [I've been told] the same thing: `Years ago, my parents explained to me that if I were ever approached by a law enforcement officer, I was to call them immediately, and they made sure that I would never agree to talk to the police,'" Duane recounts. "Not once have I ever met the child of a member of law enforcement who had been told anything different."

News accounts of the controversy in Northampton claim that the parents who objected to the police outreach program included those with "children who may have had negative encounters with law enforcement."

"Wow, only in grammar school, and they already have a sour relationship with police," sneers the above-quoted TNA commentator. "Their futures are bright."

It is surpassingly easy for children to find themselves detained, shackled, or otherwise abused by police as a result of entirely trivial misconduct. Witness the case of Michael Davis, a five-year-old from California who was arrested, cuffed, and hauled away to jail for "battery on an officer" after he pushed away the hand of an officer who had touched him without consent and kicked the assailant in his knee in an act of righteous self-defense.

This case, as it happens, did involve a delicate snowflake who filed a complaint after his feelings were hurt – none other than Lt. Frank Gordo, who claimed that he had been "discriminated" against the mother of his victim after she took the story to the media.

Incidents of this kind are becoming commonplace. Two years ago a misbehaving third-grader in Covington, Kentucky had his arms shackled behind his back at the elbows for fifteen minutes by a sheriff's deputy. The eight-year-old supposedly attempted to elbow the deputy after going to the bathroom.

"You don't get to swing at me like that," the heroic tax-feeder lectured his captive. "You can do what we've asked you to do, or you can suffer the consequences."

Yes, it's never too early to begin indoctrinating children about the state's monopoly on violence.

In 2014, deputies in Greene County, Virginia handcuffed a four-year-old who had been disruptive in class and briefly detained him at the sheriff's office. The sheriff insists that the deputy "did what he had to do" and claims that the mother was "appreciative of the way he handled the situation," which if true would be utterly horrifying.

Until recently, school resource officers in Texas would routinely treat student misbehavior as misdemeanor criminal offenses, issuing citations that could lead to fines and jail time. School officials in Syracuse, Utah have warned that students who are found at the high school during release-time religious instruction would be issued trespassing citations that, once again, can lead to fines and even jail time. The amalgamation of public education and law enforcement has created countless variations on the theme of criminalizing what had once been treated as minor disciplinary matters.