When a show called “Barney and Friends” started to get shown on PBS fifteen years ago, I wondered what kind of person Barney worshippers would support. I wondered if Barney fans would gravitate to the political candidate who is the most similar to the mythical purple dinosaur.

There are many aspects of the Barney show I detest, whether it is teaching children to trust strangers, its insipid cultural stereotyping, its annoying “I love you, you love me” theme song, or teaching children to follow the instructions of whatever the purple dinosaur says. Children should not be taught bowdlerized reality; leaving a child psychologically vulnerable to the wiles of the predator does them no favors.

In the original version of “Little Red Riding Hood”, the wolf ate the little girl. That was the point of the story. What’s more, the eighteenth century version of the story had its share of sexual innuendo. In the old tales, ruthless predators ate the children, and it was the deaths of those fictive children that served as lessons to the real children about the real dangers that lurked in the shadows.

The penalty for some mistakes is death. In real life, real children die. They don’t come back to life after the wolf’s stomach is slit upon. Neither magical amulets nor nostalgia for the politics of a purple dinosaur nor the idealism of Marvin the Martian will save civilization from the choices it must make to defend itself.

Let’s not forget that while Barney had (and still has) his loyal following, Barney is not all-powerful. Not only did fathers enjoy shooting at Barney at the firing range and adolescent boys enjoy talking about fighting jihad against Barney, but many little children detested Barney as well. The power of Barney can be defeated.