Opinion of the Amish? Should they be forced to integrate?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Proof that, even in a decadent and liberal culture such as the United States, there is some hope.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

They need to integrate.  France would never allow this; Be like France.

Disgusting.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

My comments echo Scott's in almost all respects on this issue.

Personally, I have respect for the ability to live in a manner that is apparently as sustainable and self-replicating as the Amish, and it certainly mirrors what in some respects my own aspirations for society are. That said, I am certainly sympathetic (for reasons far different than Antonio's) with the desire to implement a universal standard of education across an entire country.<sub>[1/sub] That said, it seems clear the Amish are sociologically superior to us (from what little I know of them), and I am not particularly fond of a state intent on smashing one's provincial trappings, particularly when they are in some sense an actual benefit. It is in very much the dilemma that many settler nations--both the United States and Russia/the Soviet Union included--encountered in dealing with native "uncivilized" populations. Some level of common sense--particularly as regards our "universal homogeneous state"--would have us "bring them up to our level". At the same time, these projects have in many instances sociologically destroyed these societies while still not entirely integrating them into our society; you thus suffer doubly through both the loss of culture and social sequestration. Were we to find the grandsons and granddaugthers of the Amish functioning even relatively well as software developers and suburban residents forty years from now, I would deem it a tragedy.

1. Such is essential to my ideally-conceived state, which produces skilled technical professionals in all manners suitable to maintaining the nation's pride and status in the international system.</sub>