While the deliberate censorship of toy soldiers with guns is not a new topic on this blog, I see that those I characterized as "decadent bureaucrats" in an earlier post just keep on doing it:

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Christan Morales said her son just wanted to honor American troops when he wore a hat to school decorated with an American flag and small plastic Army figures.

But the school banned the hat because it ran afoul of the district's zero-tolerance weapons policy. Why? The toy soldiers were carrying tiny guns.

"His teacher called and said it wasn't appropriate," Morales said.

Morales' 8-year-old son, David, had been assigned to make a hat for the day when his second-grade class would meet their pen pals from another school. She and her son came up with an idea to add patriotic decorations to a camouflage hat.

Earlier this week, after the hat was banned, the principal at the Tiogue School in Coventry told the family that the hat would be fine if David replaced the Army men holding weapons with ones that didn't have any, according to Superintendent Kenneth R. Di Pietro.

But, Morales said, the family had only one Army figure without a weapon (he was carrying binoculars), so David wore a plain baseball cap on the day of the pen pal meeting.

"Nothing was being done to limit patriotism, creativity, other than find an alternative to a weapon," Di Pietro said.

The district does not allow images of weapons or drugs on clothing. For example, a student would not be permitted to wear a shirt with a picture of a marijuana leaf on it, the superintendent said.

The principal "wasn't denying the patriotism," he said. "That just is the wrong and unfair image of one of our finest principals."

As to the rule that there be no "images of weapons or drugs," regardless of context, I guess that would also mean that there could be no pictures of Florence Nightingale administering medicine, and no images of medical corpsman or doctors aiding the wounded.

And we can't have famous images from World War II, like the following:

I see two HUGE, scary-looking guns in that one. Just think of the terrible damage that could be done to young minds by allowing them to see it!

CENSORED!

And Oh My God! I see at least three images of guns in this inappropriate photograph:

EEK!

Get rid of those guns!

Sheesh. This is almost as bad as Winston Churchill's disappearing cigar.

It's easy for me to laugh dismissively at such idiotic nonsense because I don't have children, so in theory the decadent bureaucrats can't reach out and touch me directly.

But they have power over people's kids, and they take themselves so deadly seriously that while it is very funny, it also isn't very funny at all.

And laughing at them does not make them go away.

MORE: Hey, speaking of "images of weapons," it occurred to me that this ban cannot be limited to images of guns, because there are many other images of weapons that might do harm to the developing brains of our children.

So I'm assuming that swords would also have to be banned.

Oh, and let's not forget the bow and arrow. Isn't it high time we put a stop to an especially deadly image that's been floating around for years, associating images of weapons with small children, and even love?

And what about the inappropriate images of arrows that children are known to carry in their pockets as "lunch money"?

The sooner we put a stop to such militaristic images of weaponry, the better!

Our children are at stake!

UPDATE (06/19/10): To his credit, the school superintendent now says that he will work to change the school policy to allow toy soldiers:

COVENTRY, R.I. -- The superintendent of a Rhode Island school district that banned a second-grader's homemade hat because it displayed toy soldiers with tiny guns said Saturday he will work to change the policy to allow such apparel.

Ken Di Pietro said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that the no-weapons policy shouldn't limit student expression, especially when students are depicting "tools of a profession or service," such as the military or police.

"The event exposed how a policy meant to ensure safe environments for students can become restrictive and can present an image counter to the work of our schools to promote patriotism and democracy," Di Pietro said.

Let's hope the School Board backs him.