Car News

I share Hooper's frustration over how the Boy Scouts of America refuse to have any more than mere membership in the World Scouting Federation.  In fact, I am probably more aware than most in the movement today.

In the 1960s, I was "Dean of Merit Badge Counsellors" (not an official title in Scouting literature, but that is what I was called) in Circle Ten Council, 14th "Tomahawk" District.  I was in charge of seeing that we had trained merit badge counsellors for the boys.  The district was Mesquite and Sunnyvale (the blade of the tomahawk) and Pleasant Grove neighborhood (the handle) in Dallas.  I had counsellors for every merit badge in the book and had over two-thirds of them each for the Dallas and the parts either side of what became Interstate 30, because I wanted counsellors within bicycle distance of every boy.

For the most part, we worked together well, despite a large contingent from what today would call themselves "militia" (we followed the constitutional definition of that term back then) who were stockpiling arms and ammunition from the militiary's American Marksman program to use in door to door genocide should the the South Dallas ghetto explode as similar neighborhoods had in other cities.  "And the best thing is those commies in Washington [the United States government] are giving us the bullets to do it with." (an actual brag expressed often at scout functions)

Then there was a coup somewhere in BSA which changed everything.  It was close enough to simultaneously that I am not sure in what order it occurred: BSA announced that they would abandon their paid-for headquarters in Brunswick, NJ and move to what is now their current one in Irving, TX at a cost of several million dollars; those in Tomahawk that took Scouting seriously were "fired" from their nonpaying volunteer jobs and blacklisted from Scouting for life; when I protested to Mr. Tarr (head of Circle Ten) I was berated for "not being able to get along with anyone" (see previous paragraph); Scout headquarters moved to Irving and Tarr became Chief Scout Executive; kids were banned from Scouting because their hippocampus was shaped differently from the majority as failure to be "morally straight" when they were far more moral than their accusers, even if not "straight" in another definition; those said "I don't know whether God exists or not but I intend to live by the Scout Law anyway" were expelled while those who said "sure the gods exist but they don't have anything to do with us" are permitted a God and Country Award (different name now), and one denomination which had 10% of its members at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (where the I Have a Dream sermon was delivered) is not permitted to sponsor a scout troop, although apparently its members can join other troops.  Thus BSA became the only hate group chartered by Congress.

Now I know there are a lot of Scout leaders carrying on Baden-Powell's ideals despite what the high muckety-mucks say or do.  But merit badge mills and even pedophiles continue without much action against them by the "leaders".

I ended up in Canada where I quickly went to Scout House in Vancouver and voluteered (to everyone's amazement and joy) and got to see what Baden Powell was really trying to do a century ago.  I had used the Canadian Scouter's (Scoutmaster's) Manual in my own BSA troop, but seeing it first hand was a real experience.  I even got to serve on a bi-national jamboree committee where I served as translator between the two national staff members (they used their term, I said the other nation's - it was the closest I ever came to simultaneous translation - in both directions!)

Most of all, I regret that BSA abandoned their own Scout's Law, "A scout is a friend to all and a brother to every other scout" and this means throughout the world.