In Gilwell Park, a Scouting reservation in the ancient Epping Forest bordering northeast London, there stands a statue of a buffalo. That statue does not commemorate any actual bison. It is a tribute to the memory of “the Unknown Scout,” who was responsible for bringing the Scouting Movement to America.
Legend holds that a Chicago publisher named William Boyce, visiting London in 1909 on his way to hunt on safari in British East Africa, lost his way in one of that city’s famous pea soup fogs. The hapless Boyce was rescued and guided to his destination by a young boy. Mr. Boyce tried to tip the boy, but the boy refused to accept any gratuity, explaining that he was a Boy Scout and this was his good deed for the day.
Fascinated by the encounter, Boyce subsequently made his way to London’s Scouting Headquarters, where he met with Sir Robert Baden-Powell, hero of the Siege of Mafeking and founder of the Scouting Movement. Inspired by what he had learned, Boyce went home and founded the Boy Scouts of America, 8 February 1910.
Since its founding in 1910, 130 million American boys participated in Scouting. Tuesday this week, the Boy Scouts of America declared bankruptcy. Like the Roman Catholic Church, Joe Paterno and his Penn State Football Program, one more conspicuous source of traditional masculine values has been scapegoated and deemed worthy of extraordinary punishment being supposedly culpably responsible for failing to prevent homosexual access to adolescent boys and sleazy lawyers and opportunistic inverts are now lining up to sue for alleged damages.
(When he gets home from the Gay Pride Parade, Bruce gets down to work on the brief explaining how being recruited in his youth to homosexual activity has ruined his life.)
Ironically, it was not very long ago at all, that the BSA’s cowardly establishment board of directors surrendered to essentially the same adversaries, opening up the Boy Scouts to females, gays, and atheists, and allowing open homosexuals to become Scout Masters. There seems to be a moral here: Give in, do everything they demand, and they’ll ruin and loot you anyway.
All this is one of the more disgraceful and offensive episodes of our dark, dishonest time. If you look closely, I think you can see a tear in the eye of that Epping Forest Buffalo Statue.
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Ann Coulter had a few choice words on all this:
I wonder if any liberals are re-thinking their insistence that the Boy Scouts allow gay men to take 13-year-old boys on overnight camping trips.
HEADLINE: Boy Scouts Files Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in the Face of Thousands of Child Abuse Allegations
The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) have long been on the left’s hate list. Any organization that has the temerity to train young men in the virtues of integrity, patriotism and self-reliance is putting itself on the fighting side of liberals!
At the 2000 Democratic National Convention, a little group of Boy Scouts took the stage as part of the opening ceremony — and were promptly booed by the delegates.
For decades, the BSA has fended off lawsuits demanding that they embrace the holy trinity of G’s: girls, gays and godless atheists. (If only it had occurred to the plaintiffs to start their own organizations! They could have given them names like “The Girl Scouts.â€)
Why would any liberal want to join an organization that was, according to them, sexist, Bible-thumping and bigoted? They didn’t. The lawsuits were kill shots.
For the left, what’s not to hate about the Boy Scouts? Their oath is: “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.â€
Nearly 200 NASA astronauts were Boy Scouts. The great outdoorsman, Teddy Roosevelt, was such a BSA booster than he was made the one and only “Chief Scout Citizen,†a scout for life.
A Louis Harris & Associates study in 1996 found that men who had been scouts placed a higher value on honesty than those who had not.
But now the lawsuits have killed them. Congratulations, Democrats, The New York Times and corporate America. (I hope all their future employees steal from them, after being raised on “Grand Theft Auto†instead of the Boy Scout oath.)
Seattle Sam
The left will not be satisfied until they have destroyed every traditional institution in America. But, then, like all parasitical agents, having killed off their host, they will need to find another source to sap.
Bilderback
Dave Burge said it best.
1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.
The Usual Suspect
Never, never, never, never give in to them. Paraphrased W.H.
OneGuy
Go woke, go broke.
Dale
I have over 25 years in Scouting, and I can tell you all this BS came from the top.
As far as destroying scouts, to the left that’s a feature, not a bug
Mike-SMO
I do re-call when the leadership of “Ex-Scouts” was replaced with mindless, amoral “Progressive-educated non-profit administrators”. The rot starts from the top. The Church-Brothers, Teachers, and Ex-military had their quirks but they understood guiding the young, and not into a quiet dark room.
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