"Paradise Lost"

Some snips about the tragedy that struck the Amish recently.

They are grieving, but not angry

America has had school massacres before, but never an aftermath as uniquely strange as this one. The day after the attack that left five girls aged between 7 and 13 in hospital mortuaries, their faces horribly disfigured by the bullets that killed them, and another five terribly injured, the Amish who live here took their remaining children to schools by buggy — and then retired quietly to their homes to pray: both for the victims, and for Charles Roberts, the man who shot them before turning his 9mm semi-automatic pistol on himself.

Violence of the modern world assails pacifist Paradise

Amish women, who sew the family’s entire wardrobe, always in black with more colourful matching pastel shirts and blouses, never use anything shiny, such as a zipper or a metal button, specifically because those things are so common on military uniforms. And the men, from the day of their marriage, grow a beard but not a moustache, because having both would too closely mirror generals of the past who they regard as tyrannical.

Guns may not be unknown in the homes of more liberal sects in Lancaster County — some Mennonites, for example, drive black cars stripped of their chrome instead of riding in carriages — but the sight of an Amish man at a National Rifle Association meeting would be ludicrous. Their faith preaches strict adherence to peace and against murder.

....Despite commonly owning guns they are strict pacifists, even if attacked. “Death is not threatening to us as Christians. Hopefully the attacker will have at least had a glimpse of the love of Christ in our nonviolent response”

Another country

How can it be that he chose to inflict his revenge for some slight he suffered at the age of 12 on girls from a community whose very existence is the antithesis of the act he committed? The Amish are pacifist. At times of war they are conscientious objectors, prepared for civilian duties such as running fire departments but refusing anything military. The community where Roberts exacted his revenge, 50 miles west of Philadelphia, has no police force and no guns....

The facts on 'femicide'

The murder of the Amish schoolgirls is not the first time, by any means, that women or girls have been singled out for death. In 1989, when misogynist Marc Lepine stormed into a college in Montreal, Canada, and shot 14 young women dead, feminists began to demand that police categorise such killings as "femicide", for the same reason that racially motivated murders are named as such. Since then, hundreds of thousands more women and girls have been murdered by men around the world. Different circumstances, different methods, but all for the same reason: hatred of females, and a desire to exercise power over them....

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It was very odd, anyway that the initial reports were that the killer partly killed the girls for "revenge" (as if - as he said that he had molested young relatives when he was 12 - that his previous actions were a cause for his "revenge" now.) He wrote, "I am filled with so much hate, hate toward myself hate towards God and unimaginable emptyness..."

He had what sounded like a stable family life (wrote that his wife was "perfect") but was obsessed with wanting to harm girls. And this was partly explained also because he had a daughter who died 20 minutes after being born. (That doesn't explain it, either).

It is such a contrast. The Amish with their community - they seem to have such a sense of inclusiveness - of being a group. They all accept so many things that set them apart from the larger culture - rejecting much of what has turned out to be negative for life on the planet. And while I'm sure that not everything is perfect in "Paradise" - it does seem that the people are quite cohesive and have quite the support group.

The killer had his nuclear support group - a wife, sons. He was not outwardly estranged. At any rate - it was quite the class of cultures - the violent vs. the pacifist. And the girls were the targets. As if they ever did anything to hurt him - besides exist.