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One day (long ago) we were chatting about various things and I asked him
where
he had grown up. Minnesota. Since I've been to many Minnesota
communities
(and listened for years to Prairie Home Companion), I asked him where in
Minnesota. He told me his story, getting progressively redder in the face
and
angrier thinking back on it. He had grown up in one of the isolated Amish
or
Amish-like religious communities that prohibited contact with the external
world. His own curiosity and intellectual abilities had led him to make a
traumatic break with the community and escape it, finding some way to get
an
education and eventually even a Ph.D. in physics. He was so angry
thinking
back on his parents and the community leaders, and kept telling me this
was
serious child abuse, and a completely unconscionable crime.
I was afraid ever to discuss his background with him again, and never did,
but
I remember his reaction so very clearly. I'm sure what he said was a
correct
description, and I appreciated being forced to think about the fact that
tolerance is not always a virtue.