OCR Text |
Show for interviews and talk-show hosts making c e l e b r i t i e s out of crack-pots. And then, in a year or two or maybe ten, the people fight over the loot they've raked in or people get tired of working for each other and the communes f a i l so they all go back to making as much money as they can and keeping up with the Joneses. But nobody i s denied work for having t r i ed on a new l i f e s t y l e , nobody goes to prison for swapping wives. But let a handful of people - who don't care about being rich, the/blasphemers against the American dream - worship God as they please, and look what happens! Its ridiculous! You'd think they were t r y i n g to indoctrinate the world! But their crime i s that they presume to have freedom to choose how they'll l i v e . Their crime i s that they don't f i t into the great American money-making mold! Their crime i s that they're honest and they don't give a damn about the middle-class plastic values of a decaying culture!" My mother sat through t h i s d i a t r i b e , as she always had done when we ranted and raved, blinking and saying nothing, I was mollified by the silence. "They a r e n ' t t r y i n g to proselyte , are they? Are they minding t h e i r own business, the way we always did?" My mother nodded slowly. "Well, our people are. Your daddy has told them that we a r e n ' t missionaries - that i s n 't °ur calling. But there have been so many newcomers, and they all have t h e i r own ideas about i t . Brother Reardon brought luite a group with him - and there were some, oh, I don't know "*at to c a l l them - - strong willed, I guess. And t h i s Alec r°seph, h e ' s from California, you know. Well, he just defied f°ur f a t h e r ' s authority." |