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Home Front: Culture Wars
An Obituary for the Boy Scouts of America
2019-09-20
[PJ] "A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, reverent" ... and a relic of history.

This weekend, my wife and I purchased Boy Scout popcorn outside a local Safeway. We were glad to contribute to a tradition in both our families: I had sold the popcorn, and so had her older brother. The money helps finance camping trips and other outdoor activities meant to build boys into men. The Boy Scouts of America has a very noble goal and I am proud to count myself an Eagle Scout, but in some ways the organization is already dead. The death of the name is already official.

Last year, the Boy Scouts of America opened its doors to girls and rebranded as Scouts BSA. This change was overdue, as the organization had already accepted girls ‐ who identify as transgender boys ‐ into the program. In an astounding move, the Boy Scouts of America surrendered its victory in a Supreme Court case. The Scouts had long fought against LGBT activists who demanded it open its ranks to openly homosexual boys and leaders. Despite winning the right to restrict its membership, the organization voluntarily surrendered to the LGBT movement.

It seems Scouts BSA may go bankrupt under the weight of more than 250 former members suing the Scouts, alleging inappropriate conduct by leaders and volunteers going back to the 1960s. The horrific crime of sexual abuse undercut the very purpose of the Boy Scouts of America ‐ to train boys into men, strong to live in the outdoors and prepared for the world ahead of them. Boys abused in scouting received psychological damage rather than character building.

The Boy Scouts Is Going Bankrupt, But It's Not for the Reason You Think

Finally, American culture has grown increasingly hostile to the mission of raising boys into men. Concerns about "toxic masculinity" have grown into an assault on masculinity itself, with the American Psychological Association demonizing traditional masculinity. Parents and teachers are scared to suggest boys and men might be different from girls and women, even though the differences are undeniable. Men and women are equal in worth and dignity, but males and females develop differently, and raising boys into men is a unique challenge.

As an Eagle Scout, it pains me to see an organization I truly believed in laid low in these ways. I firmly believe that the Boy Scouts of America was founded for a noble purpose, and that purpose remains extremely relevant today. In fact, the scandals that may have condemned the Boy Scouts only illustrate the deep need for a similar organization.

As Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS), explained on his podcast "The Briefing," the scouting movement emerged in Great Britain and in the United States at the end of the 19th century in response to cultural shifts, like men and boys living in cities and working in factories and offices rather than in fields. "There were grave concerns by the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries that boys and men in the United States were less masculin, that there was a boy crisis in particular."
Posted by:Besoeker

#6  you must crack a few eggs

Contraception
Posted by: Skidmark   2019-09-20 15:14  

#5  If you want to make an omelet, you must crack a few eggs. Boy Scouts, churches, schools...
Posted by: Abu Uluque   2019-09-20 15:08  

#4  We are living through a period of collective madness that will only come to an end when there is a traumatic, probably violent, series of episodes.

You Americans are such optimists: I'm not being facetious - civilizations rarely come back from the brink.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2019-09-20 10:53  

#3  Our culture is sick, infected with self-hatred: hatred for our sons and our fathers, hatred for our history and our institutions, hatred for our civilization and its achievements.

This fever will not break without a serious shock to the patient.

We are living through a period of collective madness that will only come to an end when there is a traumatic, probably violent, series of episodes.
Posted by: Lex   2019-09-20 09:55  

#2  Sad end. Too easy a target. Even being sued by the Girl Scouts. I have said before that boys would be better off on their own than vilified by these losers. I enjoyed both worlds. Scouts and freedom to explore. I had many projects and adventures. Because of public school I learned not to expect any support. That included sports. I was always active but never trained. The blacks got all the attention. So oblivious to such bias I was unaffected. What interested me was when I would do better that caused a great deal of anger among the blacks.
Posted by: Dale   2019-09-20 09:45  

#1  The founder of the Boy Scouts had seen the consequences of losing 'natural fieldcraft' by Englishmen in the Boer War and set about to do something about it. Those that war (by any means necessary) against those skills and principles will find themselves hard pressed by the real war they're bringing upon all of us.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2019-09-20 07:28  

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