Protecting Adolf Hitler Campbell

Were Nazi names enough reason for New Jersey to remove kids from their home?

What happened

New Jersey child protection officials removed 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell and his two baby sisters from their home. The children and their parents made news last month when employees at a supermarket refused to put the boy’s name on a cake for his third birthday. A spokeswoman for the state's child welfare office said the agency gets involved only in cases of alleged abuse or neglect. “We would never remove a child simply based on their name,” she said. (ABC News)

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As a rule, it's wrong to remove children from a home over the parents' political beliefs, said Michael Tomasky in Britain's The Guardian. And it's true that surrounding your babies with Nazi symbols is different from denying them food, "but I think in this particular case most of us can agree that removing children from an atmosphere of obvious poison is probably a good thing."

That's an understatement, said Don Surber in West Virginia's Daily Mail. The social workers who stepped in to protect these kids are "real heroes." Nazism is a sickness, not a political belief. "Calling kids such terrible names" is abuse, and it's "enough for me to denounce this couple as unfit parents."