How Leftism Killed the Boy Scouts

By Benjamin Welton

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.

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References:

1. Jeal, Tim (1989). Baden-Powell. London: Hutchinson.