Article: Courtney Love and the Mennonite drug lords

[Pelerin]

This is a tragedy. Do these Mennonites know they are a part of the drug problem? Or do they think they are just raising profitable crops?

Yeah corn prices were down a few years ago so I just decided to plant the big bag of Mystery Seed I found laying around. I didn’t know what it was so I kinda had to guess the planting depth, spacing, etc. but it shot right up. It had just started leafing out nicely when some guy in dark glasses pulled up in a tinted out Escalade and bought the whole crop from me—he even paid in cash. Nice fellow. Guess it was some kind of leaf vegetable they use for salads or something.

[GoodGirl]

As someone who used to live by CL, and now lives surrounded by Mennonites, this is just so weird.

I pity CL though.

[barnhart]

...This is to say we want the modernist right of self authorship without the postmodernist outcome of a slippery world...

... After all, the Mennonites, in their 125 years in North America, did divorce themselves from the real world, and this makes their disaster a kind of “systems” problem. Once they began to engage with the real world, there were almost no checks, no antibodies, no instincts, no precedents, no lessons in place to protect them. Their culture was missing an important piece of code. The long slide into drug trafficking was not inevitable, but once it started it was exceedingly difficult to stop...

I think this is a valid concern for groups that place high value on disengagement. The author does well to point out "right" of self determination and resistance to government is a slippery slope.

[Ken]

...This is to say we want the modernist right of self authorship without the postmodernist outcome of a slippery world...

... After all, the Mennonites, in their 125 years in North America, did divorce themselves from the real world, and this makes their disaster a kind of “systems” problem. Once they began to engage with the real world, there were almost no checks, no antibodies, no instincts, no precedents, no lessons in place to protect them. Their culture was missing an important piece of code. The long slide into drug trafficking was not inevitable, but once it started it was exceedingly difficult to stop...

I think this is a valid concern for groups that place high value on disengagement. The author does well to point out "right" of self determination and resistance to government is a slippery slope.

I don't think it is just "disengagement"

There is also the parallel ideology or belief that the world is inferior and the church community is superior which seeps into pretty much everything. I picked the same sensibility growing up Menno. That we just did things better. We were better cooks, we were better singers, we were harder workers, we were healthier and more fit, our houses were more tidy and clean, etc. etc. Which can perhaps lead to a sense of disrespect for outside authorities.

[mike]

...This is to say we want the modernist right of self authorship without the postmodernist outcome of a slippery world...

... After all, the Mennonites, in their 125 years in North America, did divorce themselves from the real world, and this makes their disaster a kind of “systems” problem. Once they began to engage with the real world, there were almost no checks, no antibodies, no instincts, no precedents, no lessons in place to protect them. Their culture was missing an important piece of code. The long slide into drug trafficking was not inevitable, but once it started it was exceedingly difficult to stop...

I think this is a valid concern for groups that place high value on disengagement. The author does well to point out "right" of self determination and resistance to government is a slippery slope.

I don't think it is just "disengagement"

There is also the parallel ideology or belief that the world is inferior and the church community is superior which seeps into pretty much everything. I picked the same sensibility growing up Menno. That we just did things better. We were better cooks, we were better singers, we were harder workers, we were healthier and more fit, our houses were more tidy and clean, etc. etc. Which can perhaps lead to a sense of disrespect for outside authorities.

Valid points for Mennonites and other fundamentalist/separatist groups to consider.