Are the Amish terrible people?

 

I find them… quite unique, to say the least. The Amish. Incredibly inbred to the point of each villager practically being a first or second cousin of the next, random guys down the door will look exactly like you, and marriages take place within a terrifying shallow genepool.

Their lifestyle is extreme, and attracts few new members. Little to no ‘new blood’ is brought into the Amish community, yet the birth rates continue to skyrocket, doubling the entire number of Amish people about once ever two decades or so — an insane growth rate. Around 1990 there were just 100,000 Amish, now there are 250,000 and there don’t appear to be any signs of stopping or slowing down.

An Amish woman has no other duty beyond “run the household and pump out as many children as God intended”, whereas the Amish man has few joys as well beyond ‘putting bread on the table and impregnating the same homely woman over a dozen times’. No alcohol. No drinking, no parties, no smoking, no coffee, often no internet and few electronics, sometimes not even a phone, let alone a cell phone…

Sex scandals and reports of abuse are rampant, and much more goes unreported as to speak out against one’s own is typically ‘not done’. Compared to their relatively small numbers, they do appear to be quite a pervy group, but they do hide well behind a facade of ‘holier than thou’ which closer examination of known statistics quickly turn into mincemeat.

No, it doesn’t strike me as a particularly free bunch of lads and ladettes. And they don’t take to kindly to those who dissent and step out of line, either — hell and tarnation surely await them and they’re rather swiftly removed. If this is terrible to you, or not, it’s not up to me to decide. But it’s not really my crowd, no.