Not-Necessarily-Boy Scouts

For a very long time – decades – the Girl Scouts have been an organization that has pushed a lefty agenda. The women’s movement, all those members of the "sisterhood," tried to be certain that their viewpoint has been the one that guides the malleable minds of all young girls in their formative years.

The proponents of the "women’s movement" are schooled in the methods put forth by radical leftists to promote their philosophy. Saul Alinsky, author of the activist handbook Rules For Radicals, was the guru of the radical leftists of the 70s. He was the subject of Hillary Clinton’s thesis in college, and inspired many of the violent acts of the time.  The women’s movement runs the Girl Scouts in a crypto-middle-of-the-road fashion, concealing their brainwashing efforts as much as possible.

This has all become part of the position that the Girl Scouts has held on issues having to do with the whole litany of liberal social causes that lefty women’s organizations consider their own. These are Planned Parenthood, the National Organization for Women (NOW), abortion, and many others. These issues have no business in the lives of Brownie Scouts, but are considered de rigueur by women’s organizations.  This is their central point and their means of recruitment

It came to our attention recently that the Boy Scouts, nationally, has affirmed a policy to begin allowing girls to join their organization. There have been several press releases and other tidbits of information which have used the usual generalities as reasons for the recent position that the Boy Scouts has decided to take.

But the Boy Scouts may be attempting to provide young girls with an alternative to all the far-lefty feminist bias. Alas, the Boy Scouts themselves have become a much more "nuanced" organization, and now have made provisions to accommodate many of the aberrations that have become socially acceptable – transgender, homosexuality, etc.

These are often cast as political issues, but really they are social issues. It’s hard to imagine, but perfectly consistent, to be a transgender, post-op Republican - Caitlyn/Bruce Jenner is one of those.

There are signs that the leftist hold that has been maintained on the training of so many of our young people is beginning to crack. The change to allow admission of young girls into the Cub Scouts may be a sign that the decades-long effort to corrupt future women is coming to an end. The Boy Scouts may offer an alternative to the left-liberal doctrinaires of the Girl Scouts; let’s hope that's so, and that it works.

Perespectives of the Past

This writer is an Eagle Scout who achieved that position just before his 14th birthday, which conferred upon him the status of the youngest Boy Scout to be accorded that rank in Memphis, Tennessee as of August 1959. He also obtained a God and Country Award the same year; the Order of the Arrow followed the next year. These are the triumvirate of the apex of achievement in that organization: he was a busy boy!

The point could be made that this writer's viewpoint is a result of conservative brainwashing during the 1950s. The retort would be that it was because of a nationally held opinion that the outlook he holds is one that provides the best results and is consistent with the inclusive philosophy of America's founding documents.

What's more, many of the tenets that he held back then were subject to change as the times revealed better ways – racial relations, for instance.  America is better off today compared to the 1950s, for consigning Jim Crow to the dustbin of history where it belongs.  There is no requirement in conservatism for intolerance of people – only for ideas that fail to pass muster.

A recent review of the requirements for rank attainment and a few merit badges indicates that the seat-of-the-pants, leave-it-to-the-scoutmaster method of advancement and merit badge acquisition has been supplanted by a more structured approach. This follows the natural progression of bureaucracy in any organization, and it is not without its benefits.

The Boy Scouts is an organization that is probably much more consistent these days than it was in time of this writer. This is true of nearly every organization that was in existence back in the day.

What we have lost, though, are those days when children were free of adult concerns. At the time that the Eagle badge was pinned upon this author by his scoutmaster, the adult world was a shrouded mystery to which high school was not even an entrée. There may be some children who can handle adult knowledge and decision making, but the vast majority of them are not ready for those relatively straightforward topics. Then add to that already daunting task the subjects of maturation and sex and the dilemma becomes compounded to the point of near insurmountability.

The fact of modern societies is that the door has been flung open to reveal the horrors of adulthood to children much too young to handle the responsibilities that are imposed by this knowledge. Additionally, the standards of society have slipped. There is much more tolerance for deviation from expected norms in today’s world. In fact, expected norms don’t mean very much anymore.

It’s now more about what you can get away with rather than how you adhere to rules and regulations. This attitude extends to the imposition of societies’ morès; gone is the time when clear-cut rules were obeyed.

Most Americans once agreed that our young should not be indoctrinated in any particular viewpoint. The variety of ideas and the selection of concepts to live by is a hallmark of a liberal (in the classic sense) education.

This is for good reason: children are highly susceptible to propaganda. They have not developed the sophistication to reject bad ideas disguised in appealing terms. Their natural task is to absorb all knowledge without regard to its status: true or not, fantastic or mundane. When a trusted adult figure intentionally adds a value judgment to the equation, it guides a young open mind into blind acceptance without regard to the validity of the position.

This was the foundational basis for the Hitler Youth (the writer is a conservative, therefore this is the de rigueur Hitler reference) and stands as the preferred means of indoctrination of the young into "acceptable" behavior. In today’s world, political correctness is the operative term.

The leadership of the Boy Scouts is aware, certainly, that the Girl Scouts have lefty tendencies and goals. Many women leaders flaunt them.

There have been withdrawals of support from the Boy Scouts by major churches in the recent past (the Mormons for one), and the whole scouting movement, both girl and boy, has suffered reduced membership, as much as 25% since 2010 in the Girl Scouts. That organization has turned into a cookie marketing activity with little else to recommend it.

But both Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts have become afflicted with political correctness to a degree that was previously unimaginable. Generations of Boy Scouts were far more interested in camping skills like cooking over open fires, hiking through national forests, or observing cedar wax wings or red foxes than in worrying endlessly whether an environmental impact statement was properly filled out. Regardless of their success in recruiting girls into their organization, Boy Scouts face a daunting task in simply maintaining the goals of their organization.

Kids are adaptable, they are ready for just about anything we throw at them. Because they are kids, they do not have the capability that adults do of making the proper selection from a large number of alternatives. And they do not have the philosophical basis for difficult choices.

Kids need standards. These are landmarks to compare themselves to, and a means for knowing that they have made progress. We have an opportunity to offer the next generation a revamped Boy Scouts. The Girl Scouts have made themselves irrelevant, and the opportunity is there to teach both boys and girls who are coming of age a lot of things that they will not learn in school.

Boy Scouting has had a long history of doing that. The Boy Scouts has the potential to recover their status as the molder of men, and can add a new capability of molding women, too - if the leadership is sufficiently determined to make that happen over the screams of offended leftists.

Let’s hope that happens.