I want to tell you nine things about the Lancaster Amish which can be independently verified:
- Virtually every adult has an independent livelihood, 59 percent in farming, 50 percent as Independent entrepreneurs. All are prosperous.
- Every adult, even the old and feeble-minded, is guaranteed an intimate share of community life. No one is abandoned or lonely. Not the ugly, not the old, not the sick. They care for each other.
- Since 1900, in spite of all external pressures and the relentless secularization of the larger community around it, this religiously based community has grown 3,000 percent in size.
- 85 percent of all Amish children, when grown, though given free choice and even urged to experience the outside world prefer to remain in their traditional way of life, near parents, family, and community.
- The Amish will not accept government health care, social security, welfare, counseling, or take any form of government schooling after 8th grade.
- There is virtually no crime, no violence, little alcoholism or drug taking in the Amish community. Amish men do not beat their wives.
- The success rate of these people in small businesses is 95% according to a Johns Hopkins study, compared to a national average of 15% among their better-schooled competitors.
- The group enjoys a low-energy, non-polluting lifestyle, yet one combined with evidence of a complex culture with beautiful hand-made homes, attractive handmade clothing, furniture, quilts, non-commercial entertainments. There's nothing primitive about the Amish.
- The overwhelming number of community members reports full satisfaction with their lives, including the young.
