So reports the Winnipeg Free Press: "Child and Family Services recently seized two young kids from a Winnipeg home based on concerns their father -- an alleged neo-Nazi -- was filling their heads and marking their bodies with messages of hate, the Free Press has learned."

Child and Family Services is apparently arguing that "The children may be at risk due to the parents' behaviour and associates. The parents might endanger the emotional well-being of the children." (It's not clear who made the markings and why the girl didn't cover them up, but it is pretty clear that the parents were teaching the girl the message behind the markings.) CFS seems to be willing to return the children, but apparently just because the mother, something of a white supremacist herself, had "recent[ly] separat[ed] from [the white] supremacist husband."

Now the parents here may be poor parents for various reasons. Among other things, "[t]here are also concerns about parental drug and alcohol use in the home," and apparently a good deal of missed school supposedly caused by the parents' liking to sleep late.

Nonetheless, the article -- and other press coverage I'd seen -- does suggest that a big part of this matter turns on what the parents are teaching the children. (According to the CFS, "Religious (and) political practices that would be harmful to children and cause them to be at risk would be one of the considerations when assessing risk to a child," and CFS's definition of harm seems to go beyond imminent danger of physical harm, such as when a religious practice leads parents to refuse to treat their children's illnesses.) And while I agree that children can indeed be harmed by their parents' teaching them bad ideas, it strikes me as very dangerous for the government to be able to take children away from parents on these grounds. Imagine whom the government might decide to turn against next.