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Amish: The kindhearted people

by bugsbunny4341 on 8/4/13, 11:04 PM with 10 comments

• by baddox on 8/5/13, 1:04 AM

  David Friedman, a prominent libertarian/anarcho-capitalist theorist (and son of economist Milton Friedman), has a similar but deeper article about the Amish, wherein he interprets their legal system as essentially an anarchy where laws, despite being extremely constraining, are produced and enforced non-violently.

  http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2011/10/are-amish-anarchi...

• by susi22 on 8/5/13, 1:10 AM

  > He was prepared to molest them but an alarm was raised and it upset him. He shot the girls spraying bullets that killed seven of them on the spot, while the eighth died in hospital.

  That's not quite true. He killed 5 and injured another 5. The molesting part is only speculation, though he did bring a tube of lube with him.

  > Noting that the village and the school where the killing took place had become a visitors’ attraction, the Amish elders had the building razed to ground overnight

  That's also not true. It was demolished 11 days later by diggers.

• by darxius on 8/5/13, 1:00 AM

  Interesting story, but I don't see what it has to do with HN topics.

  If the author's goal was to make a parallel between using less technology and being mature and peaceful, I would have to disagree. The Amish are an interesting people, but thinking that their way of living should be the norm is a romantic response to how society uses technology in the wrong ways. I firmly believe that we can only grow by increasing the technology we use across all walks of life (education, resource management, communication, labour, etc.)

• by gaadd33 on 8/5/13, 1:38 AM

  > Crime is non-existent in these villages.

  There's a pretty sizable number of Amish caught dealing drugs in Lancaster County. Although I think that's either decreased in recent years or it isn't the novelty that it was initially and there's no real media coverage of it anymore.

• by Lazare on 8/5/13, 8:58 AM

  Not sure what this has to do with HN. Also, it's probably worth noting the other side of the communities obsessions with "forgiveness": http://legalaffairs.org/issues/January-February-2005/feature...

• by keithg on 8/5/13, 1:09 AM

  Except for Floyd Landis who was a cheater and liar. He followed that up by being manipulative and engaging in blackmail. And finished by being vengeful, greedy, and vindictive as he used all of those wonderful character traits to become the catalyst who took down Lance Armstrong and all of the recent generation of USA Cycling.