I wonder if anyone else caught what the balding, mustachioed cop said in the video Karen posted — “Actually, school grounds have very different First Amendment rights than anywhere else.”

I didn’t think a building or a piece of property could have rights. Ahh, but this is neither here nor there. I understood the “limits” (sic) on what can be said at school as applying only (or mainly) to students, that “children” in school do not possess the same constitutional rights as adults in or out of school. But what this police officer is saying is that the limits on constitutional rights apply to everyone — adult or child, student or not, in school or at public meeting — who finds him or herself within the confines of a “public” (sic) school. It isn’t just first amendment rights that are abridged at schools; all rights are abridged. No one, under this understanding (and you can bet that more than just one law enforcement officer has this view of school) has many or even any rights once on school property. No one, and not just children, are safe at school. No one, not just children, has any rights at school.

I have long believed that the state schools are something akin to an American gulag, a place where adults can abuse and torture children, and encourage children to do that to each other, in order to enforce the social order — ‘scuse me, properly socialize people. I guess I didn’t know how right I really was.

The Best of Charles H. Featherstone