Boy Scouts Need Real Gentlemen To Lead Them

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Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Most boys look up to their fathers.  If dad is a good gentleman and has a good vocabulary and does those things that gentlemen ought to do, there’s a very good chance the son is going to pick up on all that because he wants to be like his father.  Again, we’re at the crisis point here where it requires a male, un-metrosexual, to actually be around.  We’re going to have to un-make the metro and remake the macho, right?  Check out today’s audio and transcript for the rest…

 

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Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Jack is in Ohio next on The Mike Church Show.  Hello, Jack.

Caller Jack:  Good morning, Mike.  How you doing?

Mike:  I am well, sir.

Caller Jack:  I wanted to make a few points about the scouts.  I got back into scouts.  I was in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts as a kid.  I got back in with my son in the Cub Scouts five years ago.  When I got back in, I was thoroughly disgusted on how Cub Scouts as a primer leading into Boy Scouts, how they have pretty much evolved into this participation-only organization.  Basically right in the leader’s manual for these awards it stated that mere participation qualified for the award.  I think that’s a lot of the problem today.  I pretty much told my parents: This isn’t how we did it when I was in scouts and this isn’t how we’re going to do it now.  I see these boys that are going into Boy Scouts and they’re not even close to being ready to be self-sufficient in Boy Scouts, which is what Boy Scouts is.  It’s boy-driven, not leader-driven.

If you’re an old scout who used to be in Boy Scouts, you need to step up to the plate and volunteer and help out.  Scouting in general is in dire need of scouts that know how it should be done from back in the day when it actually meant something.  Nowadays there’s too much everybody gets a trophy garbage.  It’s not preparing the boys for what they need to be prepared for.  That’s their motto: Be prepared.  The way scouting is running their organization now, it’s far from that, unless you get people that know what it’s supposed to be and say it’s a load of garbage and we’re going to do it how it should be done, to get these boys ready and make them do the things they need to do, not just stand there and watch a few boys earn their awards.  I think that’s where scouting has really veered off.  This other stuff that’s going on, I don’t believe in that either.  It is what it is.  Fortunately, in small pockets of scouting in rural America, we’re really disconnected from that.

Mike:  So you mean that scouts are aspiring to be men and they need to be –

Caller Jack:  That’s exactly the point.  The leaders in Boy Scouts don’t run the scout troop; it’s the boys that run the scout troop.  The leader is just there to make sure the boys don’t screw up royally.  In Cub Scouts where they’re second, third, fourth grade, these boys are preparing to get to that.  Scouting as a whole is preparing the boys to fail.  They just allow them to merely participate, just be at the meeting and Johnny gets his award just because he showed up.  That’s unacceptable in my book.  I have had a lot of parents come to me and say: Thank you for stepping up and doing what you need to do, going against the grain, going against “BSA’s rules.”  As a leader, I could get in trouble for not giving a kid an award just because he showed up.  I don’t.  If the kid doesn’t do the work, I’m not giving him an award.  That’s a no-no by Boy Scouts rules.  I think that’s a shame really.

Mike:  Well, I think that sounds all correct to me.  Of course, you’ve got to have men that are willing to volunteer.

Caller Jack:  That was my next point.  I’m kind of just making a plea to anybody that was a former Boy Scout or Cub Scout.  Whether or not you have a boy in there — it helps if your own son is in there.  That’s how I got back involved.  Our new scout leader for our scout troop this year, he doesn’t even have a boy.  He jumped back in because he knew there was a need for it.  I applaud him for it.  He’s an old-school guy.  We need more old-school scouts to jump back in to really get this ship righted again.

Mike:  It’s just like anything else with gentlemanly behavior and manners and what have you.  If you’re not reading or getting your sons to read things like the Earl of Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son and try to inculcate in him the gentlemanly manners and behaviors — you do most of this by example.  Most boys look up to their fathers.  If dad is a good gentleman and has a good vocabulary and does those things that gentlemen ought to do, there’s a very good chance the son is going to pick up on all that because he wants to be like his father.  Again, we’re at the crisis point here where it requires a male, un-metrosexual, to actually be around.  We’re going to have to un-make the metro and remake the macho, right?

Caller Jack:  Exactly.  Boy Scouts, meaning boy, guy, it needs to be a man.  Sorry, that’s just how it is.  I hate to break it to certain people but that’s the facts and that’s what it’s all about.  It’s unfortunate.

Mike:  Hats off to you, Jack.  Thanks for getting involved.  I certainly appreciate it.

End Mike Church Show Transcript