TOY GUNS, SCHOOL DISCIPLINE, AND THE NEW MCCARTHYISM: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

After a few months of government-sponsored and media-promoted hysteria over guns, the mass roundup of toddlers and preteens wielding high capacity pointyfingers is hardly surprising.

Lefties are fond of lecturing (and writing books, and plays, and movies) about the famously dark days of McCarthyism, where right wing Bircher paranoiacs supposedly were looking for a ‘Red under every bed.’ I suppose to a certain extent they had a point, but the sum total impact of that brief 50’s reign of terror seems to be that a couple of Hollywood writers lost screenplay deals.

Contrast that with our new age of left wing paranoia. Now that the national boogie men are Gunnies rather than Commies, there ain’t no bed, or closet, or playground safe to hide from our brave safety crusaders. No one is above suspicion, and so holy is their cause that even crayon-scrawled representations of Demon Gun must be banned. Obviously, we have to arrest children precisely because it’s For The Children. Welcome to New Salem, with the Reverend Piers Morgan as our new Cotton Mather.

Indeed. And, of course, our public-school educators are prone to fads, hysteria, and uncritical thinking. Which is why parents should think twice about entrusting their kids to them.

UPDATE: Reader Jim Durbin writes:

It’s probably a good time to point out that Obama has waived penalties in the Child Soldiers Prevention Act for 3 years, the latest being 9/28/2012.

The logic of the President on gun control is that I need to jump through hoops to make sure that I’m not a threat to children, but it’s in the national security interest of the United States to provide weapons and training to foreign nations that use child soldiers. And to top it off, this statement from Obama occurred 25 days before the third presidential debate concerning foreign policy.

For those saying Romney ran a great campaign. What if he had brought up that Obama as president supported insurgents that used child soldiers? Think that might have changed the tenor of the final weeks?

I think an Obama double-homicide wouldn’t have changed the tenor of the media coverage in the final weeks. But still, good point.