You lack imagination.

By educating ourselves about them.

This is, of course, yet another clumsy attempt by some sheep to pretend that sheepdogs and wolves are all the same.

“And, as a little aside, they do contribute to American society as a preserver of skills and arts>”

American diversity needs protection. Our roots are being destroyed. Miss Jean makes a good point above.

” Or maybe we all have some of the madman in us just waiting for the right conditions to ripen and explode.”

No, Anonymous. Still take the average 21c American–especially young people who are even more vulnerable– and expose such to the nihilistic music, art, media culture prevalent, and violence is a predictable outcome. Check your local crime headlines for any part of America. Someone has said that if the Islamists did not favor us with their continual atrocity display, American TV and movies would invent them.

Sergey says:
“the third form of eschatological totalitarism with ambition of world domination, after communism and facsism, but it, of course, have some resemblance to both.”

Thank you for this helpful definition.

Roberts probably was consumed with anger/rage, hurt, and envy/ jealousy whenever he encountered young, happy, full-of-life girls. His victims, I suspect, were his daughter’s age had she lived. He likely followed the news story of the recent Colorado school molestation and killing and decided to become a copycat molester and killer and vent his presumably pent-up rage and hate on these young, defenseless, schoolgirls. Why should they be allowed to live if his daughter couldn’t. Again, none of this, even if true, really justifies or explains how depraved, how base, how cruel, how “inhuman” he was or became. Crimes such as this one unfortunately no longer shock or even surprise me. If we humans can kill six million Jews, one of our kind can certainly find a ”reason” to kill five or six Amish girls. As a naive child I held high regard for humanity in general. Sadly, those lofty ideals have withered with time. For me now, it’s become a question of just how low, how cruel and how deadly some humans can be toward one another. Rwanda, Darfur, Terrorism, and many many other unspeakable acts of torture and death remind us again and again that at least some humans have no obvious regard for the value of a human life, including their own. With North Korea and Iran vying to become nuclear combatants, we all may get to witness and experience just how low and inhuman our race can go before it’s gone.

Even a fully self-sufficient community profits from the fact that they are surrounded by peaceful territories patrolled by US government forces, but personally I really couldn’t care one way or the other. They pay the price of refusing modern police services when incidents like this occur, so as long as it’s a sacrifice they’re willing to make, along with all the other sacrifices they make in the name of self-sufficiency, they can spend their lives without paying a dime to Uncle Sam, for all I care.

They aren’t perfect, but they aren’t freeloaders. In an age when people are sue-happy and demanding other people pay for the consequences of their stupid behavior, the Amish are kind of refreshing.

And, as a little aside, they do contribute to American society as a preserver of skills and arts. I’ve paid good money to see re-enactors at Plymouth Plantation and the like, but a visit to an Amish household gave me a lot more insight into how our forefathers lived.

if that is so, then any protection a state or government agency provides to them, would be unfair and probably would constitute as a gift. It would be even more unfair if the Amish asked or demanded for such treatment, as kind of like the Native Americans who want gambling tax breaks.

It is a good thing that the Amish usually does not ask for such favors or assistance. However, other pacifists, do demand quite strenously that people should die for their beliefs. Which makes the Amish very tolerable in comparison to the other wanna be pacifists in the world.