“Envy the country that has heroes, huh? I say pity the country that needs them.” – Reign of Fire
My book on the Nordic nations is really difficult to write. I’m not sure I can Finnish.
There are institutions in this country that are fundamental in shaping it. Two, in particular, helped define the 20th century in the United States of America:
- Hollywood®
- Boy Scouting
Both were a product of the American expansion between 1850 and 1940, and both were forged in the American West.
Boy Scouting? American?
The official story is that Boy Scouts was brought to the United States from Great Britain. In the immortal words of Jules, “Please allow me to retort”: Sir Robert Baden-Powell was the guy who “officially” started Boy Scouting, but given his aristocratic upbringing, Baden-Powell’s idea of camping was spending an afternoon on the patio with only one servant and no ice for his gin.
The truth is much more American: Baden-Powell based Scouting on Frederick Russell Burnham, who was born in Minnesota and crossed paths with outlaws and thieves as he learned the tricks from old cavalry scouts that served in the Indian Wars. Once all the Indians were killed or in a reservation, Burnham got bored and hitched a ride to South Africa to kill and conquer that continent, too.
In South Africa, Burnham was eventually made Chief of Scouts of the British South African Army in one of the Boer Wars. The Boer Wars were that time when the British found out that the Boers were sitting on the biggest gold strike in the world, and decided that all that was required was to get those pesky Boers off of all of that obviously British gold. I first heard of Burnham while reading this amazing true story (LINK). It’s long-ish, but amazing because it’s true.
Why do Scoutmasters wear that hat? This guy. This picture was taken after he was personally decorated by the King with the second-highest award given by Britain to soldiers, and given a permanent rank in the British Army. Also given personally by the King.
Why do Boy Scouts wear neckerchiefs? Because Burnham wore a neckerchief. In Baden-Powell’s estimation, the goal of Boy Scouts was to turn boys into men like Burnham.
Scouting was built on just that American ideal – individual ruggedness and preparedness. Baden-Powell said it very well, “A Scout is never taken by surprise; he knows exactly what to do when something unexpected happens.”
Scouting, in one quote that I read sometimes back, was based in the preparation of an ideal citizen – one that could contribute, one that could learn, and one that was not reliant on the government. It created capable, rugged boys who in turn became capable, rugged men.
Scouting found very fertile ground in the United States. Very soon there was a shortage of little old ladies to escort across the street, and they had to take shifts so the Boy Scouts could assist.
I kid.
But there are very few organizations (outside of churches) that have done as much good for the United States as the Boy Scouts.
Sadly, Boy Scouts is essentially dead. The last decade killed it.
Well, you can’t say the Left isn’t good at something.
It had already been on life support. The peak number of Boy Scouts was in the early 1970s at about five million boys. To have a similar number today would mean that there would be ten million Scouts. There aren’t. I expect that the number (when it is announced later this month) will certainly be less than two million, and probably closer to one million than two. The graph I put together (there are many conflicting sources, and I put this together using the most accurate numbers I could find, along with some guesswork and interpolation) shows that the number of Scouts is consistently declining.
I guess that nobody asked the Scouts what their opinion was.
This utter collapse in the number of Scouts is despite the tricks that the national leadership has employed to keep numbers up: they added kindergarteners, the glue eating set, to a new program called Lions. Since the name “Boy Scouts of America” wasn’t clear to them, they decided to add girls to the program and rebrand it as Scouts BSA® where BSA™ doesn’t stand for anything really. It was all an effort to keep the numbers up.
I don’t have high hopes for the girls involved in Scouts BSA™. One local Scouts BSA© leader took girls out camping. One of them snuck a spare cell phone, called a boy with a car, and disappeared with him for a week. Somehow, that didn’t make the local papers.
If you look at the graph, the Boy Scouts had been in trouble before. In the 1980s they realized the program had deviated from what made it popular: being rugged. They reintroduced the old-school methods, and popularity surged.
In 2014, they admitted homosexuals as youth. In 2015, they admitted open homosexuals as leaders. In 2017, girls who think they are boys were allowed to join. Deciding that none of that mattered anymore, in 2019 girls could become Boy Scouts Scouts BSA™ members. At every point, the Left made the point: it’s not enough. Now they want atheists to be able to join.
The Boy Scouts® used to stand for something. Scouts BSA™ stands as just the latest conquest by the Social Justice Warriors. Note that commies throughout history have hated the Scouts. Now that they own it, they can finally kill it.
This is just one story. You can find attack after attack on the Boy Scouts from the Left since the Scouts were founded. Why? Boy Scouts until 2010 was the thing that scared Leftists the most: strong individuals who were responsible for their own actions.
Hollywood© is a similar American story – rooted in the West. About the time that Burnham was killing his way across South Africa and unwittingly starting a youth movement that would transform the 20th century, the movie industry cranked up in California. Why? Well, Edison owned patents, and California was a very long way away from Edison’s lab in New Jersey. The bandits that Burnham knew in California didn’t disappear – they just turned into businessmen.
See? I can do a transition!
Hollywood™ has been a similar success story, though with a few twists and turns. For a large number of years, films coming out of Hollywood© mirrored (in many cases) the Rightist views of the American public. In the height of the Vietnam War protests, John Wayne starred in The Green Berets. Even as late as 2002, Disney® put out Reign of Fire, which was staunchly Right in attitude.
I’m not ashamed to say that I love movies. There are those who say that’s silly, and you’re more than welcome to your opinion. I see them as a way to thrill to bravery and watch as Good defeats Evil. It is a myth-making process that can showcase the very best of what we, as humans, can be.
Duty. Honor. Tradition. Cannons, pistols, and swords. French people being shot. How can you not love this movie? Did I mention French people being shot?
Now, in Current Year, Hollywood™ has managed to mangle several amazing film franchises because they had to inject either gender or identity politics into the films, and not in a light way. The latest Star Wars™ films? Pretty bad, like eye-rollingly bad. It wasn’t the effects, mind you. Those were amazing. It wasn’t the actors – Hollywood© is a consistently ruthless meritocracy of talent.
It was the stories.
Once upon a time, movies were fun. Really fun. Some, of course, still are. But what happened to the funny teen comedy? Well, comedy requires that someone is made fun of. So? Comedy is out.
No, today movies have to be “woke” and parrot the Social Justice Warrior line and teach an important moral. It’s funny when that moral isn’t what China likes, so that Hollywood™ has to change their picture, or change posters to minimize black cast members so Chinese people will go to see the movie.
Hmmm, I wonder if BLM® approved of the poster change? Think they speak Chinese?
Perhaps the reason for the injection of the Leftism is the studio executives wanting to placate their talent or their audience?
It doesn’t matter. It failed horribly.
Sure, it’s a Wilder Bikini Graph®. I was so very not going to do a bikini graph for the Boy Scouts.
Just like in Boy Scouts, now that the Left has fully taken Hollywood®, the rot has set in, and it begins to decay. People don’t want to tune in to see what Leftist fantasy has won this year’s Leftist award.
Neither one of these losses of the Left is a win for the Right. The world was better when we had Boy Scouts. The world was better when we had more movies with better heroes, and comedies that made fun of everyone.
Thankfully, I have a sea of old movies that I can watch. Also, thankfully, something will come to replace the Boy Scouts in time. Politics is downstream of Culture, and Boy Scouts and Hollywood® are part of a culture that no longer exists as it did for nearly 100 years.
That’s okay. We will rebuild. We will create institutions that will renew our culture.
Just like Burnham taught us: we will never give up. We will keep the flame alive, and fight when the odds are stacked against us.
Why?
Because we are so very pretty. We are just too pretty for God to let Western Civilization die.
Even doing a story on the Boyscouts is sad. Hollywood like our country is done. No more boyscouts.
I am “a member of an elite paramilitary organization” (or so claims a Hollywood production from the 1980’s??) i received my Eagle Scout rank in 1992. I recall at the time (east coast suburbia) that the general sentiment towards the BSA was not altogether positive. I’m not entirely sure what kind of man i might have grown up to be otherwise? But certainly i am more rugged and self reliant from those experiences!
If the BSA is no longer a viable organization, perhaps i might create a similar organization to offer the future youth of this nation similar foundational experiences as i received? But what to call this organization? I dunno… perhaps something like “young pioneers” or something similarly grand and motivational???
There are, when last I looked, only two organizations that still offer an experience similar to what you had, but no longer possible in Scouting, but both are also now in the process of being actively co-opted by the leftards, even as we speak.
One of them is called Army Rangers.
The other one is the U.S. Marines.
Royal Rangers is most of what the Boy Scouts used to be, but they are MUCH smaller.
There are some other small groups that are worth supporting as well, IF they are in your area.
Red Dawn. The scene where the traitorous mayor is explaining how his eagle scout son isn’t a threat.
Do I get a bonus point?
1984. I walked into the theater not knowing what the movie was, and was blown away.
Boys will find a way to become men. They are, by necessity, driven to be strong and rugged.
Well, the people that wanted to destroy the Boy Scouts don’t want to join the Boy Scouts (mostly). So, the kids that are still in are generally good kids.
How is it that Blue Bloods is still on tv , it’s usualy about decent people trying to do the right thing ?
Because Tom Selleck’s moustache was grown from follicles transplanted from Chuck Norris’ beard.
And Danny Reagan became a detective after killing all the Nazis in Band Of Brothers.
When the stream convergence is that powerful, even Hollywood isn’t stupid enough to go f**king around with it against the current.
It’s worse than putting George Clooney in a bat costume and trying to make Schwarzenegger the villain.
I haven’t seen it. Worth the watch? I like Tom.
Yes, definitely worth the watch. Episodes end oftimes at the family supper table; and – get this – they say grace…
Okay, I’ll have to find it. Thanks!
The Boy Scouts were a great organization and were very beneficial to me and my son. The remains of the organization are still doing some good, but I agree that the last decade was devastating. Unfortunately, the group that taught and promoted self-reliance and individualism, became too dependent on financial donations from corporations that quickly caved in to multiple attacks from the social justice mob. When the money dried up, the Boy Scouts could not support itself and had to compromise the values that it was founded upon.
The *National* organization. Which has nothing to do with actual boys.
The spirit will, in some way, in another name, survive.
Boy scouts are a construct of the white male capitalist pig patriarchy and must be burned down like everything else in the Long March to destroy Western Civilization.
External enemies will honor our evolved enlightened being status and hail our messiah the magnificent Joebama.
When Stacy Abrams is preezy of the steezy (president) Wakanda will be built in 100 days.
Forward! Yes we can.
Actually my son’s troop was 50% Hispanic where several were quite poor. It was one of the higher ranked troops in the area even though the hispanic parents did not participate. I guess I should have reached out to them more.
Amazing that a major killer of BSA was CEO of Exxon-Mobile. (He left to be one of Trump’s advisor for very short period. He was fired for being an establishment guy. BTW, XON stock price climbed after he left.
Yup. Expect the Young Pioneer Comrades to replace them. And turn in their parents for subversive thoughts.
The name change is a giveaway. You see it all the time. When I was in high school, my wife and I were both in the Future Farmers of America (even though I lived in town and my dad was a doctor). At some point after we were in, they changed the name to the National FFA Association to make it sound less farm-ish. They realized the number of farmers was declining and they wanted to stay in business so they kept expanding the definition of the organization to try to retain people. All institutions and organizations are primarily about self-preservation. You see this with churches who changed their name from First Baptist Mayberry into something like Grace Community or something else that doesn’t have the word “Baptist” in the name. Within the next 5-7 years I guarantee the Southern Baptist Convention will change their name to get rid of Southern first and then Baptist. The Scouts are doing the same thing, gutting what it means to be a Scout in the vain hope of keeping the organization going. It never, ever works.
Ahhh, yes, the generic name change, because? When you don’t stand for anything, you will stand for anything.
I was a scout till the school that our troop used for meetings decided that hosting us was too much bother and expense. Because i wasnt allowed to ride my bike to the next neighborhood over to join that troop, and as a kid that had absolutely no say-so in such things, my scouting days ended.
I too enjoy a good comedy. I thought ‘ Idiocracy ‘ was one of the best comedies made in quite a while…now, im thinking it was more of a documentary.
Idiocracy was great. But, yeah, it was set way too far into the future.
“Celia Rosatstein”, Young Socialists, 1911. Go figure. Nothing is new, and stereotypes exist for a reason.
Hollyweird was mostly founded by the socialist set, but the early ones mostly wanted to make money and wear out their casting couches (kind of like Bernie, and Polanski, and Weinstein, and…). The true believers followed. Reagan made a name for himself by standing up to the violent socialist revolution in Hollywood in the 1940’s.
****
“screenwriter Paul Jarrico — one of the lions of the blacklisted Communists — admitting that “we were certainly involved in efforts to affect the content of films,” and were “wide-eyed about the possibility of writing movies that would affect millions and millions of viewers.” ( https://www.hudson.org/research/8706-what-ronald-reagan-accomplished-in-his-hollywood-years-a-new-la-times-article-tells-us-the-real-story )
****
“At one point in the mid-1940s, Reagan joined two organizations – the Hollywood branch of the American Veterans Committee and the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions – and, according to biographers, left both after discovering that communists had active control.
″To say that I was naive is putting it mildly,″ Reagan once said on looking back at the beginnings of his experience as a Hollywood union activist. ″… I wasn’t up on the communists.″
Hollywood was a communist target in the 1930s and 1940s because of the major impact of the film industry on the social perceptions of a vast American audience.” ( https://apnews.com/article/43e9c90d8177871105953a7c4728a781 )
To this day people get on a high horse about the evil days of the Hollywood blacklist (the good ol’ days when cancel culture worked for the good of culture), yet everyone mentioned as being on that blacklist somehow continued making movies throughout that period…
Interesting insight about the film industry, it’s beginnings, and how it works:
https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/sites/default/files/Pagesfrom9780814338070-epdf.pdf
Quite informative for an academic paper.
Thanks! I’ll give it a look!
It’s true that Hollywood has often had a progressive link – Celia would be proud – but in order to sell any tickets, they had to appeal to actual Americans.
My go-to example is “South Pacific”. Beautiful scenery. Wonderful music. Cool war story. Evil, anti-white subtext deliberately written in (and celebrated) by the usual suspects.
Yup. Progressive as could be . . . .
See my comment below : 1880 – 1930 has been disappeared from our history books.
Peculiar, nu-?
Churchi is set then, by accident. Now I wonder if by providence.
Gee, will ya look at the spike in the Academy Awards viewership in 2014, I wonder who the host was?
Ugh, Ellen Degeneres. I guess the liberals didn’t want to be called out for homophobia…
Ha!
Yeah, not seeing any movie that won that I’ve even seen.
I understand that the LDS version of Scouting is going strong after it split with the National organization around 2017. They were fed-up with the gay and gal infusion. They always ran a great scout program except the events stopped Saturday night so they could attend church.
I found out recently that even the bastion of conservatism, LDS, now has a strong opinion against firearms. If true, then even they have started the March to the left.
Our local Baptists are since trying to make scouting work. The Methodists were actively killing scouting in the late 90s. One of the ministers refused to allow a troop until several of the scouters on the church committee informed him otherwise.
Scouting in the mormon religion is far more deeply integrated into their religious life than is true for Christian groups but you are correct that they are charging more than marching to the Left. That is one of the nice things about having a “prophet”, he can always change doctrines to suit the zeitgeist, like that whole shift away from polygamy and blacks are accursed and can never be part of the priesthood. Very convenient.
Not LDS – but the Baptists around here dumped it without a thought after the homosexual scouts were admitted.
100% done.
Back when I was a young woman we used to call the Wisconsin Synod hardcore because they were so doctrinally sound they would not let their sons join scouting but built their own institutions.
30 years later…
Yup. The Baptists booted the Scouts the same day that the first decision came down. The same day.
I’m mostly done ripping my DVDs to disk so that I can more easily watch them. I have 517 in the folder at the moment. I haven’t started on the Blurays yet, and I have a few box sets of multiple episode disks that are a pain to rip left in the drawer.
Watched “Adventures in Babysitting” last night with the kids, ages 10 and 12. Couple of F bombs, a Playboy magazine, and I had to explain to my 12yo what “homo” meant. One of the kids in the movie tells his sister that her hero Thor is a homo. Great soundtrack.
There is a lot more teen sex, female nudity, and foul language in 80s films than I remember. There is a LOT less graphic violence.
It was a great time to grow up, with a whole film genre called the “Teen Sex Comedy”.
The preponderance of scarves, ugly sweaters, and HUGE glasses on girls can be overlooked. (or in the case of the geek girl glasses, celebrated 😉
n
Adventures in Babysitting – great movie. The 1980s was about fun. Autumn. Harvest time.
Geek girls rule.
When Boy George can become a Boy Scout, language has descended into nonsense.
Which was rather the entire point of the exercise.
Please ignore the rampant pedophilia that purely coincidentally underlies (you should pardon the pun) the rot in both of those establishments.
I’m sure an unconquerable desire to doink little boys is just correlation without causation, and that being fabulous and being a fabulist is just an onomotopoetically unfortunate happenstance.
BTW, has anyone heard Sockpuppet Of The U.S. Gropey Dopey circling back to talking about his leg hair since he got a full-time speechwriting crew?
His handlers shortened the leash.
Nice pic of him with his hand on” the doctor’s ” backside in the Daily Mail today. Nice to see him touching someone old enough to read Harry Potter for a change. Or maybe he just tripped and that’s where his hand accidentally landed…
n
Pedos are attracted to scouting for the same reason robbers are attracted to banks.
Yup, rot all around. I’m not sure about Hollywood, but the rot in the Scouts is at the national leadership level.
And it was entirely planned.
Gropey is kept in Tupperware when he’s not talking.
We put two sons into BSA, starting with cub scouts. And had two wildly differing outcomes. Older son loved it, went on to become a scout leader and worked for three consecutive summers at Camp Yawgoog in Rhode Island. Summers away in his teens while being paid, no parents around, wonderful camaraderie. He was in his glory.
Younger son was a sourpuss who hated the uniform, didn’t like camping, thought Boy Scouts was for dorks and quit as soon as we let him.
Today, older son is a line manager with a hyooge international shipping concern, wildly popular with his team, outgoing and cheerful, never lets life get him down. Younger son is still a sourpuss, still hates camping and works in the mental health field, presumably to surround himself with others who are at least as much of a downer as he is.
Like anything else in life, you get out of it what you put into it. Its a damned shame that scouting is no longer what it used to be, but we’re glad for the memories.
Are you quite sure no-one got handsy with younger son back in the day?
No, I am not. But big brother was truly BIG brother (stood 6′ tall at age 12 and followed my lifelong path into bodybuilding) and looked out for his little brother all the time. The scoutmasters of our troop were also personal friends of ours whom we engaged with socially outside of scouts.
I was actually more worried about our younger son’s stint as altar boy in grades 6 through 8.
Fair enough. I work with young teens and… A sudden inexplicable hatred for something For No Reason from one who’s a bit of an outsider already is a red flag.
One of the reasons I encourage parents to participate in all my programs, attend our meetings, etc. It is a bit hard on the socializing for the kiddos, but it keeps us clear of predators. Better dull than damaged.
Yup. The Boy is an Eagle. Pugsley is (more or less) done. That’s okay. I’ve seen the decline ramping up recently.
Any chance Pugsley could do His Own Eagle? I’ll make him a custom badge for sticking it to the corruptors.
Build up. Build over. Build around.
He’s off in gasoline fumes and pur-fumes and sports.
“I’m not ashamed to say that I love movies. There are those who say that’s silly, and you’re more than welcome to your opinion.”
It is extremely silly, almost as silly as “My Cousin Vinnie.” Oh man, that movie was so silly. The only way that movie could have been better is if Herman Munster had sentenced some coastal people to death.
Another movie I loved that you might not have seen is “War Gods of the Deep,” starring Vincent Price.
I remember reading somewhere that special forces training is really training people to become hillbillies. This is also why the Gurkha are some of the greatest warriors in the world. The city people sneer at the hill people, who sneer at those a bit higher up in the hills, who sneer at the Gurkha who live even higher up in the tallest mountains of the world.
Fun memory – British SAS were invited to an exercise in Virginia. We started them with the land navigation course out in the woods. We’d all been through it multiple times, and thought it was decent, but not all that challenging. The SAS teams straggled in hours late, and we had to go out and search for one that got really lost. They all complained that we had specially designed and planted the course to be impossible. We told them that we just left the wildlife and greenery alone to do whatever it pleased. They’d never seen truly unkempt woodlands before, and were appalled by blackberry brambles.
We explained about poison ivy the next morning. It was hilarious.
Obviously not Kiwi SAS. In the commonwealth the Boys Brigade has not converged, but it was overtly Scottish and Christian from the beginning
Hahahaha.
Blackberry brambles are my bete noir and the East Coast variety are kittens. Ours are tigers. That is too funny. No wonder they lost the Pig War.
I haven’t seen War Gods of the Deep. I’ll give it a look. Vincent’s best movie (IMHO) is Last Man on Earth.
As always, adversity brings strength.
I was the older brother who got a bunch out of Scouting. Though my younger brother isn’t a sourpuss, he just wasn’t that interested in it. I will forever regret not pushing to get those last few badges for my Eagle – my service project was a community bulletin board, that more than 15 years later is still standing – and used! That sense of duty, love of the outdoors, and appreciation for structured growth programs stuck with me all those years.
Our parish has a troop (with no girls) and between the pandemic reaction, and the BSA’s reliance on intermittent technology, we’ve been struggling to stay engaged. If the national org keeps its current direction, there’s a couple other orgs that have sprung up to meet that need – Troops of St. George is one I’ve been eyeballing.
The Scouts, as originally envisioned, were Good.
Virtue matters. Haven’t heard of Troops of St. George, but Pugsley’s out of range shortly.
Two Christian organizations that will replace the scouts are American Heritage Girls and Trail Life USA. They have been doubling in size nearly every year.
I’ve heard of Heritage Girls and Trail Life.
They seem to be picking up the torch. I just wish that someone would pick up the 1910 Boy Scout Handbook and start with that. It was done well at the start.
There’s Pugsley’s project. He and his (future) wife can put it on their To Dos.
Maybe get Castalia to republish?
Now those are both great ideas. Since “Scouts BSA” abandoned it, someone should pick it up.
I was a bad boy scout. Not into it, which probably led to the usual drugs/booze later on. I still can’t start a fire with out gasoline as a helper.
We called flammable liquids for starting fires, “Boy Scout Water.”
I originally read that on my phone as “I still can’t start a fire without a stripper as a helper.”
That one word changes the whole sentence.
Write that EOTWAWKI story, someone…
Ha!
Scoutmaster here, we march on raising boys and girls up. I teach, lead and encourage. You are not wrong on many counts but the spirit lives on.
Can’t raise up both boys and girls in the same spirit in the same organization. Boys and girls are different.
Boys need time and space away from girls, to learn to be men.
> Can’t raise up both boys and girls in the same spirit in the same organization. Boys and girls are different.
> Boys *need* time and space away from girls, to learn to be men.
I used to think that; now I think it’s sexual perversion. I’ve now met too many well-adjusted homeschoolers who are comfortable making smalltalk to the complete range of human ages and sexes.
The biology term for an animal which has matured enough to bear live young is “adult”. Raise young human adults together and they pair bond and start families. Gosh, how bizarre and weird. Instead we need to block young adults’ normal process of maturation and acceptance of responsibility, and treat them as incompetent children for another ten years. Then we can channel all their energy from thwarted biological drives and anger from being oppressed into activities which further push them off-balance. Carefully prevent alcohol consumption and in response you get binge-drinking when freedom finally appears. Carefully prevent sex and you get hookups. Carefully prevent private property ownership and home privacy and you get unsustainable mortgage debt.
Because advocating giving boys some time and space away from girls, so they can be boys, obviously means complete sexual separation from birth to adulthood.
I was talking to a dad who had brought his kids to a “how to rock hound” class I set up. He was *thrilled* that BSA had added Girls In. When I suggested that boys needed boy space with dads, he countered with how great it was not to have to drive his kids (2 boys and 1 girl) to separate projects.
OK Boomer.
The spirit will.
Girls need an utterly different program.
Eagle Scout ℅ 1999 here. I finished and Eagled at the last uptick scouting saw in this country. Now, 22 years later, it’s no water guns cause they are considered to be in violation of the scout law…(a scout is kind)…rrriigghhttt.
Checkout Trail Life USA. This is scouting the way that Burnham & Baden-Powell envisioned it – bold action, based in the Bible…think, helping little old ladies cause God asks us to honor our parents and grandparents, not cause culture says it’s the “right thing to do” (we all know how quickly culture changes right?).
National Paintball Tournament, boy led program, badges and ranks that are actually challenging and male leadership that teaches biblical manhood. And don’t forget, Corporate America has no say so in what is taught, how we teach it or who is allowed to join…
Sound like fun? Check out
https://www.traillifeusa.com/
Caleb, thanks. I think that will be the one that takes over from the BSA.
When I was a lad, me and my brothers were in the Cub Scouts. Mom was a Den Mother. Dad was a Scout Master for the Boy Scouts.
When the scouts would go out on one of their monthly camping trips, us kids trailed along, except for the Camelback hikes which were 60 mile hikes and no one wants complaining pre-teens on a long hike like that. Plus every scout had to carry a pack that weighed 20 to 30 pounds.
Some of the places we went were Ocotillo Wells, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Echo Lake and Mataguay Scout Reservation.
Me and my second brother went on to boy scouts. But after a short stint, our Scout Master Dad had a falling out with the local leadership over the direction the troop was headed. I don’t recall what it was, but I believe it had something to do with demographics and the exclusion of the “certain people” from joining our troop. This was back in the late 60’s.
Me and my brothers didn’t mind because we had other things to do like little league baseball and occasional deep sea fishing trips, as well as family camping trips to the Mojave Desert and the Sierra Mountains, particularly the Walker River area.
Perhaps the reason most boys become Eagles is father involvment – which it looks like was entirely there . . . .
And moms supporting the dads and the cubs 100%. The wives made it possible for the dads to be dads. And vice versa. ALL my paternal uncles were Eagle Scouts and grandma was a den mother.
It’s like putting mongooses in Hawaii. This whole delicate male/female cultural ecosystem gets derailed by ignorant gammas and fatherless girls with a grudge.
100% correct. Every word.
Holy Hippopotamii in a Hand basket, Mr. Wilder-!! I finally got ’round to reading your Blacky Dusquene vs. The Greatest Scout Ever linked story and … Wowza.
How did you find out about it? Homeschooling the DP’s U.S. history has made me realize how invisible the 1880s – 1930s U.S.A. is. So strange.
Did you know Heinlein popularized Fabian socialism via Daddy Longlegs? Or that there was a [object of Cat Fancier] mafia? Or how WEIRD we Americans were? That Lillian Gilbreth was erased from women’s history, or…
Anyhoo. Thanks again.
(P.S. Q says we should culturally appropriate Cinquo de Mayo by making Glyph cook scratch enchiladas for us. Yes!)
Yup. He was a commie early on, but then dumped it for a proto-libertarianism that bordered on libertine. Nice! Chicken? We had cold pizza. And I went to sleep early.