Could "Separate but Equal" have worked............

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Okay, Hanotaux, you can give it up already.

? ^

He claims you are a sock-puppet of a previous racist poster.

MP, I'm not sure I agree. The writing style is significantly different, and I don't think Hanotaux would have been able to make a "decoy" writing style.

Hanotaux is a banned overt racist. But I guess Orwell has a point, you're writing styles are different and Hanotaux probably lacked the flexibility to come up with a consistent, new style to avoid the moderators.

^ Oh, ok. I didn't know what he was playing at.

I saw a couple Hanotaux posts earlier but I'll have to go check them out. Thanks for the heads up.

How about we never let the racists know about previous racists on the board, eh?

Why not? After all, Hanotaux had such an inglorious end!

Necro-posting.

Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Actually, according to a program on NPR, Amish adolescents are allowed a period of freedom called 'rumspringa' (IIrc) during which they're allowed some freedom, possibly including contact with the outer world, and only are subject to the harsh rules (and shunning if they break the rules) if they decide to go back to the community, which most do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa

The Amish are not segregationists -- as far as I know, anyone is welcomed to come join them. But either way, it is fine for people of any race or culture to "not want to fuse their culture" if theirs is different and they want to preserve it.


What do you mean by "mingling"? The Amish do plenty of interacting with others. They are not isolationists.


I do not believe that is an accurate statement. They simply do what they do, and that does not include "expanding their horizons" or whatever.


Yes.


Not true. The Amish consider it a privilege to work the soil with their hands rather than with machinery.

leejosephowrote:

^ I remember when Tim Allen became Amish.

Mabye I'm thinking of Quakers? I think they are all gone though.

Where I used to live, the Amish constitute a major portion of the workforce in their area, and even to the point that one factory occasionally goes down for the day on an Amish holiday or for a wedding or a funeral. The Amish are *not* isolationists!


What defiance? They are simply continuing on in their long-held beliefs and practices.


There could be an element of truth there in the sense of outside or "worldly" pressures now being too much for them to deflect.


Not true. They well know what is "out here", and they would prefer to have healthy and peaceful interactions all around.


That is accurate. I have seen Amish 'teens driving buggies with boom-box radios mounted in the rear windows!

No Amish children are forced to "join the clan" or held there against their wills as adults.

Returning to the question of "Separate but Equal" ...

The Amish are a good example of people who have done that without asking for anything from anyone else. They have built and maintained their communities all on their own, and they take care of their own within and from within their communities. However, and at least for the ones I have known, their infrastructures are no longer sufficient ... and at least part of that problem comes from demands placed upon them from the outside. As one simple example: They are now required to have telephones for 911 purposes ... and the phone companies do not accept eggs in exchange for services. So, someone must build a phone booth on a corner of the property and go get a regular job and a bank account.

On a different note: One of the most interesting things I ever saw was an Amish welding shop with gas lights hanging from the ceiling. The bishop had allowed the shop's owner to have a large generator for powering the welders and an air compressor, but the owner decided to just leave the shop's lighting as it had always been during their previous days of blacksmithing.

I think that "separate but equal" was doomed from the start because while "separate" is easy enough to achieve, "equal" is a pipe dream. How do we measure "equal?" Equality of inputs? Equality of inputs after correcting for demographic and geographic factors? Equality of results? Is there some other measure?

What one person will consider equal by one objective measure, another person will argue is inadequate by an equally valid, objective measure.

Furthermore, separate systems are are, of necessity, less efficient because they required duplicated administrative structures, and fail to realize the potential for aggregation.

Then pay no attention to them. The Amish are quiet and peaceful. They do not force their customs on outsiders nor do the interfere with what non-Amish do. Pretend they are not there.

ruveyn