What The Heil?

Heath Campbell of Holland Township, New Jersey, can't understand all the hate people are lumping onto him. All he wanted to do was get his 3-year-old son a cake with a cheery message: "Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler!"

Yes, that's his name: Adolf Hitler Campbell.

The local ShopRite grocery store refused to make it, but a nearby Wal-Mart did.

From Leighvalleylive.com:

Karen Meleta, a ShopRite spokeswoman, said the grocer tries to meet customer requests but rejects those deemed inappropriate. "We believe the request to inscribe a birthday wish to Adolf Hitler is inappropriate," she said.

The grocer offered to make a cake with enough room for the Campbells to write their own inscription. But the Campbells refused, saying they would have a cake made at the Wal-Mart in Lower Nazareth Township. The Campbells say Wal-Mart made cakes for Adolf's first two birthdays.

A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart said the store won't put anything illegal or profane on a cake but thinks it's important to respect the views of customers and employees.

"Our No. 1 priority in decorating cakes is to serve the customer to the best of our ability," Anna Taylor, the spokeswoman, said from Bentonville, Ark.

So there, Wal-Mart haters, you have another dart to throw.

Oh, and did I mention Adolph has a baby sister named JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell?

But let us return to the father figure in this ruckus, a 35-year-old with German ancestry who obviously never spent time on a playground.

The Campbells have swastikas in each room of their home, the rented half of a one-story duplex just outside Milford, a borough in Hunterdon County. They say they aren't racists but believe races shouldn't mix.

The Campbells said they wanted their children to have unique names and didn't expect the names to cause problems. Despite the cake refusal, the Campbells said they don't expect the names to cause problems later, such as when the children start school.

I feel for the teachers who'll be educating these kids.

Giving a child the name of a notorious mass murderer isn't considered abuse, but only on paper. I see it as a continuous form of abuse, rooted in ignorance and showing absolutely no regard for the welfare of the children outside the home. The kids can't legally change their names until at least 18. What's worse, young Adolf and JoyceLynn won't even know they're victims until they figure out why they're getting taunted and beat up at school all the time.

The law in New Jersey has no power to come in and take a child on grounds of racist parenting. Earlier this year, Texas authorities found they couldn't take hundreds of children from their polygamous parents, even though we knew darn well what would happen to them after puberty. The legal principle of presumption of innocence includes the reasonable corollary that you can't arrest anybody for a crime before it is committed -- except in Minority Report.

Passing a law to ban certain names won't stand under our Constitution, nor should it. We've got to do better, but that's only possible if we have better parents. Heath Campbell says his kids will make their own decisions on race. If only they could do the same with their names.

UPDATE: Since I first posted this story, Child Protective Services has removed the kids from the home.