Monday, March 07, 2005

Carefully taught

Yeah, this sounds like just the kind of day-care center I'd want to drop my daughter off at:
State records call a recent inspection at a Sarasota child care home "routine," but some activities at the house are anything but typical.

The child care center, in a modest residential neighborhood, is also home to a self- professed white supremacist and neo-Nazi who hosts a well-known Web site and Internet radio show.

Michael Herbert Blevins, who calls himself "Von Bluvens," has been a leader in the white supremacist movement, according to national watchdog groups.

In interviews posted on various Web sites, Blevins, whose wife, Bernadette, operates the day care, has advocated shipping blacks back to Africa, deporting Mexicans and wholesale "extermination" of non- whites. He also has called for putting Jews to sleep and produced artwork of an apparent gas chamber with the title "Haulocost: This time it's for real."

A neighbor says she has seen a Nazi flag in a back bedroom of the home, down the hall from where young children spend the day.

Sarasota County officials, who regulate child care homes under a state contract, say they have no reason to close the day care. They stress they have found nothing that violates health and safety regulations, and they also must consider Blevins' constitutional right to free speech.

It's true that the Blevinses have every right to operate their business. But you have to wonder about any parent who knowingly subjected their child to that environment. It would border on abuse.

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