From: Ted Burton (scouter@CONSULTBURTON.COM)
Date: Sat Jul 22 2000 - 23:18:43 CDT
I rise to protest a little.
>In the United States we are limited to ONE Scouting organization for
>boys. Big Government decides who has the exclusive right to dictate
>what Scouts are to believe, as well as who may be a Scout, and who
>may be excluded from Scouting because of their beliefs or their lack
>of belief.
We are limited to ONE Scouting organization (thank God) by a
copyrighted/trademarked/servicemarked name: Boy Scouts of America. In
the home of some of my ancestors there are Catholic Scouting
organizations, Protestant Scouting organizations, left-handed
Scouting organizations, and right-handed Scouting organizations. One
does not have to do any dividing and conquering -- we divide
ourselves.
Other groups which have adopted BP's philosophy in whole or part do
exist in the USA, but they are not permitted to call themselves Boy
Scouts. I am glad of that. It avoids Balkanizing.
Big Government had not decided anything about what Scouts are to
believe. Government has in fact just finished saying that it is up to
Scouting to decide what Scouting believes, when the Court decided BSA
was in charge of admissions to the ranks of BSA. Government has taken
hands off.
I find the term "Big Government" to be the worst form of sloganeering.
It is currently used by those who do not like one thing or another,
call it "program A," to describe that Program A, and implicitly to
criticize Program A; such people may love Program B.
Others use the term to describe Program B, though they love Program A.
Those two groups of people appear to agree, because they use a common
slogan, when in fact they are diametrically opposed to each other.
That is why sloganeers who get elected to Congress sometimes have
trouble mustering a majority to kill a program they do not like, even
though they are surrounded by fellow elected enemies of "Big
Government." Tobacco price supports are my Big Government.
Appropriations for the Rez may be someone else's Big Government.
When I see the words Big Government in an argument, I just sort of
tune out, for someone is throwing labels around in a general
direction, and is not in fact telling me why they do or do not in
fact like some thing. It is the opposite of reasoned discourse.
--
========================
Asst Scoutmaster, District Committee, District Commissioner,
Lewis-Clark Trail District, Inland Northwest Council 611, &
'a good ol' Fox too'; Es Kaielgu Lodge 311, Tseminicum Chapter,
Vigil, mailto:scouter@consultburton.com ; and Macintosh fan.
Take a look at http://www.consultburton.com/scouter.html
========================
