What did I know about the Amish? Big on religion. Don't use automobiles, phones or watch television. Strive for an earlier kind of existence they say is closer to what life is about. In other words wackos, but, you know, colorful won't hurt the children wackos who live off by themselves in the country and whom, we now see, hurt and bleed as deeply as anyone else.

Then I heard this community, who's children had been slaughtered, had gone to the wife of the man who had murdered them, an outsider, to offer her consolation and support in what they understood to be for her an equally tragic disaster and it brought home to me something of the courage and spiritual strength that must flow to them from their stand against the modern world. I take off my gaudy white Italian hat and bend my head, understanding that when I think “wackos”, I know little or nothing at all.