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I've seen this family on the Discvoery channel and they hold a strange fascination for me. I can't quite decide if they're good or weird. Probably both.
I found that MonkeyFilter thread pretty nasty. The Duggars are self-supporting, and are entitled to live their lives the way they choose if they're not hurting anyone. I remember from the Discovery special that they'd both been in real estate/insurance and had made some sound investments that now allow them to live debt free. They're bringing the children up with their own fundamental Christian values, which are probably far to the right of my own, but that's their choice to do so.
Live and let live is a good philosophy, BUT! What about the children (heh)? I'm one of five children and there was never enough adult (mum) supervision (dear ol' dad took off long ago). I can't remember one instance of one on one time with my mum - not one. The older kids had to watch out for the younger kids, etc. None of us had much of a childhood. JimBob has sixteen kids. How much "quality" time is any one of those children getting? Yeah, they're fed, clothed and housed but that's not all there is to good parenting.
Fuck that. Not only are they greedily sucking up resources, but they want to impose their morality on the rest of the world. They need some nasty thrown up in their mugs.
Sorry, no. Jim Bob Dugger has 16 children, and thinks you should, too. The very first sentence on his site says "As a two term state legislator, Jim Bob Dugger fought to defend the life of the unborn".
Don't throw away your votes on this guy! Instead, vote for Bim Job Jugger, who has 16 wives, no children and fights to defend the undead. After all, you may become undead some day... but never unborn.
He did live like a block away from me. I passed his house almost every day. Every once in a while you would see a procession of kids walking/biking down the sidewalk. It looked like a church service had let out.
Hell, I bet the parents can't even keep their names straight.
Isn't that why they named them all names starting with "J" or something?
I've watched a few of the TV specials on them. In my opinion from what I saw more than a handful of the kids were showing signs of emotional and intellectual neglect, and probably a bit of malnutrition as well.
They eat mostly processed, canned and frozen food. They must have huge salt intakes. The kids are forced to dress a certain way. Their homescholled "lessons" are sparse. The parents even decide what musical instruments they play. If I recall correctly, the instrument of choice is the violin.
They suck up a huge amount of resources as well. Probably less resources then a number of families comprising the same number of people, but still. Waaaay too many kids.
That said, fuck 'em. I'd love to see how some of the kids turn out. With their odds, at least one of them is probably gay.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
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