The Battle for the Boy Scouts
by Hans Zeiger

Nearly a century has passed since Lord Robert Baden-Powell founded the Boy Scouts in Great Britain. It has been a century filled with radical ideologies that recruited young men into Hitler Youth and the Communist Party, that populated the American youth cult with hippies and druggies, and that replaced fathers with fanaticisms and mores with MTV. It can truly be said that young men might have annihilated the modern world had it not been for the Boy Scouts.

The Boy Scouts have always been a great threat to the utopian dreams of the ideologues. In the 1920s, the national secretary of the Young Communist League warned Lord Baden-Powell that he should expect a fight to the finish. Baden-Powell replied, "You can't fight without two. Our aim is to help to poorer boy, independent of all political questions, to get his fair chance of happiness and success in life."

Today, the Boy Scouts - at least in the America where the Scouts haven't succumbed to political correctness - remain above the trap of radicalism and ideology. While truth has been supplanted by relativism in most American institutions, the Boy Scouts still study and practice principles.

But the fight to the finish that was launched by the Young Communist League is not over. The Boy Scouts is an exclusive organization; it is only for males who adhere to the Scout Oath and Law. So wherever the gospel of perfect equality is preached, the Boy Scouts are assaulted. As a result of that assault, the Boy Scouts organizations in Great Britain and Canada and many other countries have opened their memberships to females and homosexuals.

The chief legacy of the communist movement to combat the scouts in the United states today is the American Civil Liberties Union. ACLU founder Roger Baldwin wrote in Soviet Russia Today, "I champion civil liberties as the best non-violent means of building the power on which worker's rule must be based. When that power of the working class is achieved, as it has been done only in the Soviet Union, I am for maintaining it by any means whatever." Later, in a Harvard University publication, Baldwin admitted, "Communism is the goal."

"There is fresh evidence that the ACLU intends to end all federal support for the Boy Scouts of America," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist on November 20, announcing the Save Our Scouts Bill to reaffirm the federal government's relationship with the Boy Scouts of America. "In their view, where there is government there cannot be faith. But to this legislator, the ACLU's continued attacks on the Boy Scouts are starting to become its own form of persecution."

Frist attempted to pass the bill through the unanimous consent procedure, but it failed. So he promises to reinitiate the bill next session.

Frist was responding to a November 15 decision by Pentagon attorneys to prohibit military base sponsorship of Boy Scout troops as a settlement of a five-year old lawsuit filed by the ACLU. At issue was the Scouts' "duty to God" contained in the Oath, which precludes atheists from joining the organization. The ACLU said that BSA partnerships with the federal government violate the First Amendment. Since that isn't the case, it seems that Eagle Scout Donald Rumsfeld's Department of Defense went against Administration policy by giving into terrorism, in this case by the ACLU.

The week after the Pentagon decision, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution by a vote of 391 to 3 applauding the Boy Scouts for its contributions to the nation. Darrell Issa (R-California), who sponsored the resolution with Joel Hefley (R-Colorado), said that the purpose was to "defend the Boy Scout's ability to continue the fine work that they have done for nearly a century." Only Democrat Congressmen John Dingell of Michigan, Barney Frank of Massachusetts, and Lynn Woolsey of California opposed the Boy Scouts.

Eagle Scout Congressman J.D. Hayworth (R-Arizona) wrote to Secretary Rumsfeld seeking a reversal of the Defense-ACLU settlement. And Jo Ann Davis (R-Virginia) is co-sponsoring legislation in the House to cancel the capitulation.

However the issue is resolved, it is not a battle that America can afford to lose. There is too much at stake here to give up on the Boy Scouts. Our very capacity for self-government is at risk when we allow the ACLU to deny a boy's opportunity to learn to be, "trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent."

Congress must follow through to protect the Boy Scouts, and ultimately to stop our courts from becoming a permanent tool of the ACLU. Americans who care about the protection of the Scout Oath and Law ought to contact their member of Congress immediately with the message of Senator Frist's bill: "Save Our Scouts!"

The ACLU considers this a fight to the end. Well, let's put an end to the ACLU obsession to end the scouts.

Hans Zeiger is an Eagle Scout, president of the Scout Honor Coalition, and a student at Hillsdale College. He is author of a forthcoming book about the Boy Scouts in the culture wars. www.hanszeiger.com

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