How Leftism Killed the Boy Scouts
By On May 2, it was reported that the Boy Scouts will no longer be the “boy” scouts. Now and forever, the Boy Scouts will be a co-ed club called the Scouts BSA. The name change will be effective in February 2019, according to the Washington Post. Effie Delimarkos, the spokeswoman for the Scouts, said “Scouts BSA perfectly represents the new, inclusive program for older Scouts that the Boy Scouts of America is proud to offer.” Chief Scout Executive Michael Surbaugh invoked the social-justice buzzword inclusive again while talking to the Associated Press, parroting that the new Scouts want “to land on something that evokes the past but also conveys the inclusive nature of the program going forward.” Inclusivity, progress, equality is the 21st century version of Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.
The Boy Scouts have caved in to the progressive mob once again. First, after howls of pain and anguish, they allowed openly gay members to serve as Scout Masters. The press said that they evolved on this issue. By allowing girls to join their boys’ club, the Scouts have “evolved” once again. This is, of course, despite the fact that girls already had the Girl Scouts. The modern left’s agenda should be clear: destroy all tradition, democratize everything, push anarcho-tyranny, and quadruple down on egalitarianism.
There has already been some significant push-back to the new Scouts. While membership in the organization has been dropping since at least 2005, the new, softer Boy Scouts is leaking membership and driving away boys at unprecedented rates. If one cannot be a boy in the Boy Scouts, than where can one be a boy in 21st century America? Not only are the old civic bonds of yesteryear decaying thanks to demographic changes and the dysgenic sexual revolution, but public schooling, the one major institution that almost all boys must suffer through in their lives, holds them to the same standards as young girls. Bad parents, oppressive schools, over-medication, disruptive technology, and sexual imbalances ultimately produce mass shooters and other psychopaths.
Origins
The Boy Scouts used to be an antidote to such unhealthy living. The history of scouting shows that it was designed to breed generations of hardy, independent young conservatives. That too has been lost, and one would be foolish to argue that the history of Scouting was not on the minds of those left-liberals who decided to deconstruct the Boy Scouts.
The Boy Scouts began with one man: Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell (1857–1941). Although born in the industrial hub of London, Baden-Powell became well known for embracing what President Theodore Roosevelt termed the “strenuous life”. Such a life of toil, sweat, defeat, and victory is best experienced in nature, not in the modern metropolis where state authorities, in cooperation with socialist-minded organizations, have subsidized losses with welfare.
Baden-Powell came to the strenuous life from a Victorian background. He was the son of a reverend at Oxford University, and was educated at the finest schools in England. However, Baden-Powell’s love of sport, especially water sports, meant that he balanced out his scholarly experience with physical activity. Baden-Powell also had something of a rebellious streak, for at Rose Hill School, Tunbridge Wells, Baden-Powell would avoid curfews and upset teachers by going into the nearby woods to stalk and cook game.[1]
Like any respectable man-of-action in late-19th-century Britain, Baden-Powell joined the British Army officer corps in India. Southern Africa would be Baden-Powell’s true home and laboratory however, and his scouting against the Zulu and other Bantu tribes made him a formidable warrior. In 1896, Baden-Powell signed up for the militia being organized by Cecil Rhodes and his British South Africa Company. Despite much Marxist revisionism to the contrary, much of the history of the British Empire came about because of the exertions of joint-stock companies or other semi-private corporations. The British East India Company, which was formed on the last day of 1600 by merchants and traders in London, set out to increase English trade with China but wound up ruling most of the subcontinent of India for almost two centuries.
The British South Africa company, founded in October 1889, set out to similarly exercise exclusive economic rights over the area north of the Limpopo River. The BSAC expanded British power in southern Africa and British capital without placing the financial onus on the British taxpayer. Cecil Rhodes, a devout believer in Anglo-Saxon supremacy, only hired true “Pioneers” to conquer and patrol what would become the nations of Northern and Southern Rhodesia. These hand-selected hard men would become the forefathers of the Rhodesians who stood up to a weakened London and defeated thousands of Afro-Marxists on the battlefield between 1965 and 1980.
Baden-Powell joined the BSAC in 1896 and soon became one of their ablest commanders. In Southern Rhodesia, Baden-Powell learned expert tracking and scouting from the American Frederick Russell Burnham. Burnham, like Rhodes, realized the economic and civilizational potential in southern Africa, and alongside Baden-Powell, he helped to put down the rebellious Ndebele and Shona tribes who had earlier began killing off the small white population. During this bush war, Baden-Powell, Burnham, and about 400 white militiamen defended the city of Bulawayo against overwhelming odds and led reconnaissance missions deep into the heart of enemy territory.
Such fighting would prove extremely important in Baden-Powell’s life. Between 1899 and 1900, Baden-Powell, now back in the British Army, became a national hero for defending the city of Mafeking in the British Colony of Natal. In arguably one of history’s greatest tragedies, the free Boer people of South Africa and brave British soldiers made war against each other in Natal, the Orange Free State, and the South African Republic (sometimes simply called the Transvaal). For months at Mafeking, Baden-Powell and about 1,500 British troopers held off over 7,000 Boer commandos armed with state-of-the-art Mauser rifles and new cannons from Germany and France. Miraculously, Baden-Powell and his men held off until relieved on May 16, 1900.
The Boer War served as a serious wake-up call for the British military establishment. Britain, a world power, was nearly defeated by part-time soldiers. Many blamed London’s shoddy performance on the terrible quality of volunteers and British men overall. Essayist and soldier John Frederick Maurice wrote two essays, entitled “Where to Get Men” and “National Health: A Soldier’s Study”, that argued that industrialization and urbanization had led to a generation of sedentary men without the physical capabilities for soldiering, especially in the far-flung parts of the British Empire. Maurice wrote that “about 60 per cent of those presenting themselves for military service were rejected by doctors as unfit”.
A government-sponsored survey corroborated Maurice’s findings, writing that only “two out of five of those who are willing to enlist are fit to make soldiers”. Another writer, Elliot Mills, put the problem in even starker terms in a 1905 pamphlet entitled The Decline and Fall of the British Empire. This work argued that there were eight things at work in Edwardian society designed to ruin London’s overseas empire:
- The prevalence of Town over Country Life…
- Growing tendency of the English…to forsake the sea except as a health resort
- The Growth of refinement and Luxury.
- The Decline of Literacy and Dramatic Taste
- Gradual Decline of the Physique and Health of the English people
- The Decline of Intellectual and religious life among the English
- Excessive Taxation and Municipal Extravagance
- Inability of the British to defend themselves and their Empire
Simply put, both Mills and Maurice saw Edwardian England as far too civilized. Baden-Powell was of the same mind. In 1907, Baden-Powell laid the groundwork for what would become the Boy Scouts at Brownsea Island Scout camp. Four years earlier, Baden-Powell had published Aids to Scouting, a manual/memoir about his time fighting in southern Africa and the lessons he learned out in the bush and veld. The book became an instant bestseller, and schools across Britain began training their young men in the arts of scouting, reconnaissance, etc. Baden-Powell’s goal was to create generations of future British imperialists armed with the skills necessary to survive in the wild. Chief among these skills was the physical prowess necessary to sustain life on the sharp edge of the spear.
Scouting proved immensely popular in both Britain and Europe. Indeed, in both Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany, the German Wandervogel movement was established in order to reconnect urbanized German students with the glory of nature.
Heyday of the Scouts
Baden-Powell’s movement caught on in the United States with gusto. The Scouting Movement’s combination of hardy living, muscular Christianity, and individualism appealed to a United States still populated with its original Anglo-Celtic founding stock. The popularity of the Boy Scouts was such that on May 1, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson announced the creation of National Boy Scout Week. President Wilson addressed the assembled crowd, saying “The Boy Scout movement should not only be preserved, but strengthened. It deserves the support of all public-spirited citizens…Every nation depends for its future upon the proper training and development of its youth.”
In many ways, Mr. Wilson’s words are reminiscent of the British Empire’s war recruiting campaigns of the then-recent Great War. In that conflict, after the decimation of the British regulars, the best trained and most experienced fighting force in the world, London first relied on volunteers, then resorted to conscription. In order to do so, the British state encouraged the cultivation of “Young Lions” ready and willing to defend the great British Empire. President Wilson, realizing that in many ways America had replaced Britain as the greatest world power by 1919, wanted to see American boys as the new “Young Lions.”
Seven years later, another American president, Calvin Coolidge, publicly honored the Boy Scouts and Baden-Powell. On May 1, 1926, in Washington, D.C., President Coolidge praised the Boy Scouts as an “ally of strict parental control and family life under religious influences.” This was no empty pabulum; Coolidge became a big supporter of the Boy Scouts and saw in their values the spirit of public service and personal responsibility.
Later presidents such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan also gave their support to the Boy Scouts during their time in the White House. By 2010, it was noted that 110 million boys had been in Boy Scouts since its founding. Given this popularity and official support, why have the Boy Scouts slipped into irrelevancy?
The Decline
The decline of the Boy Scouts can be blamed on a multitude of factors. For one, the rise of single-parent homes in America means that many homes are financially strapped and pressed for time. Similarly, most single-parent homes are run by women, many of whom may not realize or care about the masculine development needs of their young boys. Another major factor is growing urbanization of the United States and the wide availability of electronic distractions. It is not uncommon to see and hear many American youth choose the virtual world over the real one, online friends over real ones met face-to-face, and digital sports over real, sometimes painful ones.
In truth, the Boy Scouts of America have declined so rapidly because of the decline of American civic culture more generally. Bowling Alone chronicles this collapse, with the sharp decay of bowling leagues, civic organizations like the Elks and Rotary Club, and general trust between neighbors being the hallmarks of a more “diverse” America. Without what Edmund Burke called the “little platoons” of civil society, tradition, order, and stability cannot survive. Once they are gone, centralized tyranny takes its place.
The Boy Scouts have been the target of leftist deconstruction since at least the 1960s. The first major battlefield was the issue of racial segregation. Before 1974, the Boy Scouts did not officially bar black members, but it gave wide latitude to state and local chapters. As such, many Boy Scout troops did exclude black members. Giving no thought to the idea of freedom of association, civil rights leaders and the press agitated for nothing less than mixed-race scout troops. In 1974, the last segregated Boy Scout council, the Old Hickory council, caved.
While mixed-race troops might not sound like such a big deal to centrists or milquetoast “conservatives”, it is because an outside force with next to no stock in the Boy Scouts or the scouting movement as a whole dictated what that private organization should look like. As with the recent inclusion of girls, left-wing busybodies decided to socially engineer a group in order to meet some sort of civic goal. Importantly, most of the agitators will never have to live with the consequences of these actions. Therefore, future exercises of social engineering will continue unabated and without fear of consequences.
The civil rights push to integrate the Boy Scouts and the subsequent decline of the organization highlights once again the fact that human tribalism should be respected. Rather than have black scouts commingle with their white counterparts, what is so wrong with creating all-black Boy Scout troops or even black alternatives to the Boy Scouts? American life since the 1960s has proven that there are many dangers to forced racial cohabitation, including interracial violence and political mobilization of grievances. By using the kritarchy to fabricate social codes and conduct in lieu of natural selection by individuals, the American state has encouraged strife.
Decades later, the same media jumped on the backs of the Boy Scouts and demanded that they admit openly gay adults into their organization. At first the Boy Scouts resisted. Then, when the resistance began to falter, some more conservative-minded Boy Scouts left and formed Trail Life USA. Unlike the new era Boy Scouts, Trail Life is openly Christian and patriotic. Under the “Our Values” section of their website, Trail Life makes no bones about their intentions:
“The morals and values of our country are deteriorating at an exponential rate and are becoming increasingly opposed to true Christian values. As our organization grows and matures, future challenges will require increased character and courage by both adult and youth members as they stand for the timeless values articulated in the TLUSA Statement of Faith and Statement of Values which originate from the Holy Scripture and the teachings of the Church. With this cultural pressure in mind, we will continually commit ourselves to the truths found in the scriptures, that we are to fear God and not man, and that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and understanding.”
Trail Life is also adamantly androcentric. It, like other scouting movements that have broken away from the Boy Scouts and are siphoning off members, promotes the original values of Baden-Powell. The weak responses of the Boy Scouts to social justice agitation will only further drive more boys away and into the arms of more traditionalist groups.
As Robert Conquest’s Second Law states, any organization that is not explicitly right-wing is vulnerable to left-wing infiltration. The Boy Scouts were once synonymous with white American, Christian, and masculine virtues. Once these were eroded, the group became vulnerable. Leftists can never be satisfied with victory; they must always push for more. When the Boy Scouts integrated, it only became a matter of time before more groups demanded entry. This should be a warning to any private organization which seeks to keep its membership homogeneous.
Never buckle, stay true to your values, and never worry about the slings and arrows of the press—that is the ultimate lesson to be taken from the Boy Scouts’ sad decline.
What Should Be Done
We now find ourselves in an even worse position than Britain circa 1907. The average American male is overweight, addicted to electronics, and depressed. Our men are in desperate need of something more—something natural, something alternative to the rot of left-liberal society. Since men find most meaning in shared experiences, they need some kind of organization in order to connect with healthy masculinity. Some men find this in the military, but the US military has increasingly become feminized and bureaucratic. Now the Boy Scouts are no longer an option either.
In our highly atomized society, it would be easy to just tell men to scout on their own or in small packs, but that is not good enough. Communities or philanthropists in the US need to emulate Baden-Powell and create private fraternal organizations designed to help American men to become independent, self-confident, and capable in the wild. A better world would see someone like Peter Thiel or John McAfee found neo-scouting movements with highly restrictive entry requirements.
In order to foster a new American brotherhood, a neo-scouting organization should be explicitly right-wing and offer only closed membership, exclusively barring any leftists from entering. Another necessary policy would be to keep any neo-scouting movement far away from the public sector. The Boy Scouts may have enjoyed the adulation of the U.S. government for decades, but by linking themselves so closely to Leviathan, they left themselves vulnerable to a hostile takeover. Being attached at the hip to the public sector risks the use of state power against an organization.
These prospective organizations should be openly pro-family and not hostile to Christianity. Each member should be encouraged to marry or at least be in a committed, stable relationship. Membership in the American armed forces or police services would not be actively encouraged and may need to be discouraged, but those members who do decide to join the public sector should make promises to always live by the code of their group.
These neo-scouting groups should be anti-egalitarian, with physical activities designed to prove who among the men or boys is the strongest, most intelligent, and most daring. Military training is a must, as are activities and skills like farming, tracking, cover/concealment, and long-distance hiking. A culture of physical fitness would be paramount. Finally, taking a lesson from Ernst Jünger, this prospective movement would seek to create a million men in the image of Lieutenant Sturm—a soldier, a patriot, an artist, and a poet.
The best option would be for free individuals to create their own clubs, whether those be political, religious, or purely social, and organize scouting-like activities in America’s many wildernesses. Better yet, these men would be encouraged to emulate the left’s “long march through the institutions” and to create right-wing and/or libertarian fiefdoms in already powerful blocs in public life.
References:
- Jeal, Tim (1989). Baden-Powell. London: Hutchinson.
<<Agreeing With Statists For The Wrong Reasons: Minimum Wage+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Dealing With Doxxing>>