OK, a slower day than usual.
Having just come back from a trip through The Keystone State, I’ve been considering a rather unique part of the American cultural landscape.
The Amish.
Some thoughts come to mind about the Amish.
We put up with them, more or less. But they’re generally not really a part of American life on a daily basis for most people and certainly not a deciding factor in the lives of many.
What they preach could arguably be called a religion, but they regard it as a way of thinking, and a way of life.
The vast majority of people regard them as flakes that they wouldn’t want their son or daughter to marry.
Certainly, they are purists on steroids.
For many decades they’ve been trying, without success to convert others to their way of thinking by means of example… the example their devotion to what they see as the truth;
However;
They’ve not had any new blood enter their circles for years. Indeed, they’re actually losing followers by the day.
Certainly, they are fundamentalists…. purists on steroids. As a freind said to me recently:
Fundamentalists exist in every belief system. They are people who take a single a assumption, and extend it to EVERY other conclusion they reach. That inexorably colors their entire worldview, until the disparity between reality and their beliefs–or that between actual *knowledge* and belief–can only be maintained by Fundamentalism.
They pride themselves on not working within the system because of what they call principle
Do these conditions apply to some the political spectrum, as well, I wonder? To whom… to what group or groups, would all of these points within the political spectrum, apply?
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