Labor Officials Target Teens in Family Businesses
Amish families in Lyndonville have been told the businesses they run in which their minor children, ages 14 to 17, work — including sawmilling, metalwork, and construction — have to cease using the children. The Amherst Record newspaper reports labor officials began placing the businesses on notice earlier this [2006] summer. And, of course if you limit the Amish, you’ve got to limit everybody else. That includes New York’s home schooling families, as home school students often intern with someone in the world of work instead of going to trade school.
Amish in conflict with labor laws
“If we couldn’t put our boys to work and they didn’t do nothing until they were 18, they’d be absolutely worthless. We want them to be obedient and to learn a trade. If they don’t, they’ll be out and getting into mischief. Next thing you know, you’ll have a bunch of them getting into dope and drinking and partying. Our kids don’t do that,” he said. “If you have a boy that goes to work, he feels tired and he don’t want to go out howling around all night.”
“What we’re seeing is a clash of two different cultures, a clash of modern industrial culture with a more traditional, rural cottage-industry culture,” said Donald B. Kraybill, author of Amish Enterprise: From Plows to Profits. “The outside community,” he continued, “has a distorted assumption of the Amish.” Outsiders “don’t appreciate the value of children’s socialization and orientation right on the job. They think it’s oppressing the children when in fact it’s not. This is an incubator for Amish values and culture.”
Incoerenta conservatorismului (și probabil a “marșurilor pentru normalitate”)
Cei mai mulți dintre cei care se auto-intitulează astăzi conservatori sunt preocupați, după cum este de așteptat, de decăderea familiilor, divorț, nelegitimitate, pierderea autorității, multiculturalism, dezintegrare socială, libertinism și criminalitate. Ei consideră că toate aceste fenomene sunt anomalii și devieri de la ordinea naturală, sau de la ceea ce s-ar putea numi normalitate. Cu toate acestea, cei mai mulți dintre conservatorii contemporani (cel puțin cea mai mare parte dintre purtătorii de cuvânt ai protipendadei conservatoare) fie nu cunosc faptul că obiectivul lor – restabilirea normalității – necesită cele mai drastice, ba chiar revoluționare, schimbări sociale antietatiste, fie (dacă sunt la curent cu lucrul acesta) sunt angajați în trădarea agendei culturale conservatoare din interior, în vederea promovării unei agende complet
diferite.
