TODAY'S New York Times story on the concerted efforts by conservatives across America to ensure that their children do not have to hear the president of the United States speak about the value of education and hard work on Tuesday had a nugget that seemed to go a bit deeper than the silly opposition to the speech itself:

And Chris Stigall, a Kansas City talk show host, said, “I wouldn’t let my next-door neighbor talk to my kid alone; I’m sure as hell not letting Barack Obama talk to him alone.” 

This speaks not just to Republican opposition to a Democratic president; it also indicates a profound level of generalised paranoia. The man is attempting to insulate his children from any outside influence. He's not just scared of Barack Obama; he's scared of his neighbours. The statement puts one in mind of those 1930s Scott Tissue advertisements that piggybacked on anti-Communist hysteria: "Is your washroom breeding Bolsheviks?" The outside, the alien, socialism, the unclean, infection, pollution. They're coming for the children!

The opposition to Mr Obama's speech is fundamentally an attempt to deny the legitimacy of the president. It should be resisted. No liberal parents pulled their kindergardeners out of class to avoid having George W. Bush indoctrinate them with the esoteric neoconservative messages embedded in the text of "The Pet Goat". (No wonder he was so insistent on finishing the reading!) But it's also part of a broader atmosphere of paranoia that has taken root in American child-rearing in recent decades. In 1969, 50% of American children walked to school; that is down to less than 15%, in part due to fears that their children will be kidnapped, even though violent crime against children hasn't grown at all. Those parents are increasingly reluctant to vaccinate their kids, for fear that vaccines are secretly harmful—ie, that the entire edifice of modern scientific medicine is an elaborate conspiracy to harm their children. Teachers have their licenses revoked for letting kids climb up hills. And so forth.

It's nuts. Walking to school is safe. Vaccines are good for you. Climbing hills is healthy. And if conservatives are worried that Obama will beam his mind-rays through the television screens and turn their children into... pro-business moderate liberals, or something, they should chill out: the mind-rays don't work. In 1988, Ronald Reagan addressed the nation's schoolchildren via television, and in 1991, George H.W. Bush did the same. And in 2008, those kids, now aged roughly 24 to 38, voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. If, on the other hand, conservatives make the president's speech seem like something forbidden and cool, that they're not allowed to watch... that just might ensure those kids vote Democratic when they get the chance.