Welcome to Nanny State America — where parents are arrested for letting their kids play and children are given detention for hugging their friends

America has taken the meaning of being a nanny state to a whole new level, if these two recent incidents — one in Massachusetts and the other, in Florida — are any indication.

According to Reason, as quoted by Liberty Blitzkrieg, Charles Smith and Lindsay Pembleton of Niagara Falls, parents of two boys, aged seven and nine, will be “arraigned later this month on charges of reckless endangerment of a child.”

Allegedly, while the family was vacationing in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the parents gave their boys permission to stay at the beach a little longer (with the condition that neither was to go into the water), rather than walk back to the nearby campground. A lifeguard spotted the children, wet from the rain and with no adults accompanying them, and decided to report the incident to the police.

Thanks to the lifeguard’s quick thinking, the “irresponsible” parents are now awaiting the results of their charges of suspected abuse and neglect. For what, again, exactly? For giving their children more time to play at the beach, yes.

If the above report wasn’t enough, here we have the story of 14-year-old Ella Fishbough, in another preposterous case of Nanny America trying to overly interfere with the lives of regular folks.

For Ella, giving a hug meant trying to cheer a good friend up. For her school’s principal, however, it meant doing an inappropriate act “considered to be offensive, socially unacceptable or not suitable for an educational setting.” Unfortunately for poor little Ella, that hug cost her a morning in detention, as well as a blemish on her previously clean disciplinary record.

According to The Independent, “It is at each principal’s discretion to determine what kind of touching is inappropriate. According to WFTV Orlando [the news site since deleted the source used by The Independent], hugging was banned altogether at Jackson Heights this year, in addition to holding hands, linking arms and kissing.

In a conversation with Fishbough, Jackson Heights principal Sarah Mansur-Blythe said the PDA rule will continue to be strictly enforced — even in the case of family members [emphases added].”

Ella attends Jackson Heights Middle School in Oviedo, Florida, part of the Seminole County School District.

Florida parents, you should know better.

What’s even more surprising is that Ella’s case isn’t the first of its kind. According to The Associated Press, Megan Coulter, an Illinois eighth-grader, was once labeled a “second offender” by her middle school, back in 2007, for gently hugging two different people.

Meanwhile, on Wall Street, none of the proponents of the financial crisis have yet been apprehended, or have been labeled “offenders,” at the very least.

Source:

LibertyBlitzkrieg.com