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Re: Choice
[Caleb Stegall 03/03 02:56 PM]Anti-Amish guy emails: Okay, Caleb, I was going to leave this alone but you really set me off.
When I read the email from that woman who was extolling the virtues of living in squalor it drove me nuts. Now you're saying that she's a BETTER parent by virtue of the fact that she's raising 7 children in a structurally unsound house (holes in the floor and windows that won't close) that from time to time has no electricity. She's one step up from living in a tar-paper shack in the woods. This isn't better parenting. Raising children in an unsafe environment is tantamount to child abuse. Of course she home-schools her children. If they went to public school they'd be getting a visit from Children & Youth Services.
… [She] sounds like one of those weird (that's right, weird) people who keep their children home and cut off from the real world, resulting in individuals who are incapable of interacting in society. From her description it sounds like they live in some wacko wannabe-Appalachia corner of the middle of nowhere.
I think he’s wildly misinterpreting that mother’s email, but that’s not really the point. The point is to emphasize the virtue of not pretending that all the choices we make are best and of keeping front-and-center in our memory the example of those who have done better, sacrificed more, spoken more truthfully, loved more fully, and thought more deeply than we have.
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