Hunt

"It is interesting that nobody has suggested wearing old uniform shirts on campouts!" I don't know--even assuming the shirt was practical for camping use, I'm not sure I would like to see a Scout appearing in public, even on a campout, in an obviously "ruined" uniform shirt.

If the scout's reason for wearing the kilt is to annoy others who would prefer that he wear the regular uniform, that isn't a good reason--in fact, it's inconsistent with the Scout Law. It shows a lack of courtesy to those other scouts and leaders who will appear in full uniform at an Eagle COH. I can't really think of any good reason for a scout to wear a kilt with a BSA uniform shirt--the fact that he thinks it's kewl to do so does not outweigh the lack of courtesy. There may be good reasons for certain Eagles to wear something other than a BSA uniform--but I don't think this is it.

"Be active in your troop and patrol for at least x months as a xxx Scout." This sentence is a good example of how hard it can be to apply rules, especially when they seem inconsistent. It simply cannot be that an Eagle Scout who is SPL for the entire three months after receiving his Eagle isn't eligible for an Eagle Palm. That would be an absurd result. So, most likely, Bob is right that if a scout is in a non-patrol position, he meets the spirit of this requirement. The only other alternative I can see is that the SPL is supposed to somehow remain affiliated with a patrol and be "active" in it to some extent--and that, apparently, is contrary to other BSA documents. So really, what we have here is a simple rule which simply does not take into account all the situations in which it may be applied. Really, it should read: "Be active in your troop and patrol (or non-patrol leadership position) for at least x months as a xxx Scout." I don't think it likely that anyone would seize on this to make a SPL spend additional months in a patrol in order to get rank, but they could if they insisted on applying the rule literally.

What about Napoleon Dynamite?

"Try a word association. Ask someone what the first think that pops into their head is when you say Boy Scout. I'll bet not a one says "popcorn" thank goodness. Ask the same person what they think of when they hear the words "Girl Scout", I will bet the majority say "cookies". The BSA is not trying to make the association that strong. They are merly supporting a project that has been very successful in helping to finace scouting at the local level in both the unit and council operations." So you're saying BSA deliberately chose a less attractive product in order to avoid being too closely associated with it? C'mon. That association is gold for the Girl Scouts, and everybody knows it. Even though the coucil takes a big chunk of the cookie sales, it still works out because they sell a lot of cookies. If BSA could come up with a product that formed that association, that people really wanted to buy, year after year, they'd jump at at. Popcorn isn't it, however, and never will be, because it's exactly the same as what you can buy in the store for less money--popcorn is just a vehicle for seeking donations,just like most of the stuff youth groups sell. I'll bet a substantial percentage of the people who buy it never even eat it--and that's something you also can't say about Girl Scout cookies.

While most of the Founding Fathers were indeed nominally Christian, many of them were not very religious at all. George Washington, for example, attended church with his wife, but always left before communion. He said almost nothing in his life indicating any kind of living faith. The Founding Fathers certainly came out of a Christian tradition, but they were also profoundly affected by Enlightenment thinking,which was much more humanistic in nature. (Jefferson is the prime example of this. If you're interested, go read about Jefferson's "improved" version of the New Testament.)

How about: Local Hero High Noon A Bug's Life Cool Hand Luke (for older boys)

"You are saying that you have to sell to 8 times as many customers to make a $1.15 more than seling to one Popcon customer. Does that really make good business sense to you?" Well, maybe. It depends on which product creates a greater volume of sales. If it didn't, the thing to do would be to sell mega-tins of popcorn for $1000 each. You wouldn't have to sell many of those babies to fund summer camp! How about this idea--have the troop buy a fixer-upper house, and then have the boys fix it up and then resell it. They could probably earn Home Repair, Painting, and Plumbing MBs at the same time, and the troop would only have to sell ONE item. (You know, except for getting the initial dough to buy the house, that idea doesn't seem as ridiculous as when I first thought of it.) More seriously, the Girl Scouts move a lot of cookies, in large part because people actually want them, and because one box is pretty cheap. Although you can buy similar cookies in the store, you can't buy those exact cookies, and people really like them. (I always buy some Samoas, for example.) This just isn't the case with popcorn. It's not even really all that much of a convenience to have it brought to your house. In my home town, there was a charity that sold brooms door to door. They were successful, because people often need a new broom, but never think to go and buy one. My church youth group had some success with light bulbs, for similar reasons. Even if you don't need them now, eventually you will. Again, popcorn just doesn't fit that model for many people. (I don't like candy bar sales for similar reasons, but others suggest that they sell OK because they are cheap.)

I think one has to make a distinction between making a joke about something and making light of something. If you look at editorial cartoons, for example, they do the first all the time without necessarily doing the second. For example, I don't think the line about the corners of the YPT card is really making light of child abuse--while the joke refers to abuse, it is really making light of something else entirely. I will say, however, that some topics are so sensitive that it is very difficult to address them with humor, even if you are trying to use humor in a satirical way. I remember right after 9/11, I was watching Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. What could he possibly say that was funny? He showed clips of a bunch of politicians who were all supporting the President, all showing unity, etc. The camera cut back to Stewart--he was holding a knife and fork, with an empty plate in front of him. "So hungry!" he said. So, his joke was that there was no joke. Here's an example of a satirical joke one might analyze for offensiveness: "Did you hear that President Bush has appointed a commission to find out who was to blame for the poor response to Katrina? He appointed O.J. Simpson to head the commission--O.J. plans to start right after he finds the real killer." Is this joke insensitive to hurricane victims? To the families of murder victims?

My idea--and I hope you like it better--is that each unit should have an apportionment, sort of like each church in the United Methodist Church has. Based on your size, there is a certain amount of money you are expected to contribute to the regional and national organizations. You can raise it any way you want, and if you are a disadvantaged church, you can get a reduction or a waiver. (It's actually more complicated than that, but that's the basic idea.) If there was an established apportionment like that, a unit could draw it down by selling popcorn, or by doing its own fundraisers, or by sharing donated funds. What's wrong with that idea? (This message has been edited by a staff member.)

I think there are a couple of elements to this thread--some practical, and some ethical. Some people have raised primarily a practical complaint--the popcorn products have risen in price too much, making them too difficult to sell. I don't see this as much of an attack on BSA--just a suggestion that they need to add some lower-price products, or look at other authorized products. After all, there's nothing magic or particularly scout-related about popcorn. The ethical issues are more thorny. I think it's obvious to most people that almost nobody buys Boy Scout popcorn because they want the popcorn (in contrast with Girl Scout cookies). They buy it only because they want to give money to the Scouts. You have to wonder whether most of them would simply give the money as a donation if asked to do so. So are Scouts really "selling" a product when they sell popcorn, or are they really soliciting donations? I personally prefer fundraisers in which labor by the scouts (and adults, usually) either creates the value or adds value to the product sold. For example, my son's troop sells and delivers mulch. People are happy to pay more than the mulch at Home Depot, because we deliver it--that labor adds value. A final issue is the Council share of popcorn sales. Obviously, this is just one possible mechanism for funding the Council, but I suppose it is relatively easy to administer. Perhaps a Council could let units drop popcorn sales if they agreed to earmark a share of other fundraising efforts for the Council.

"If in your opinion, the merit badge counselor did not do a thorough job of making sure the boys met all the requirements, take it up with them, not the boys." I agree with this in terms of the technical rules of advancement, but I find it hard to accept in terms of the values that we are supposed to be teaching. I'm not talking about disagreeing on a judgment call (such as what swimming in a "strong manner" is, for example). I'm talking about a requirement that simply wasn't done. I think we'd be remiss if we didn't point out to boys in this situation that there's something wrong about leaving the requirement undone and claiming to have earned that MB. Furthermore, I'm not advocating investigating or reviewing MBs, either--but this kind of information does come into your possession, especially after summer camp--sometimes it's volunteered by the scouts. I think the scout has an ethical obligation to fix such a problem, and I think the adult leader should point it out. (Let me add that I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't take it up with the MBC too--you should. That might not be so easy to do, of course, if you only find out about the problem months after summer camp.)

I just want to clarify that I wouldn't necessarily suggest that the scout do the MB over, or treat the old one as a partial and have a new MBC sign a final one. If the lack is relatively minimal (ie., something they "couldn't do" at summer camp because the facilities were inadequate, say), I might suggest that the Scout simply do the requirement and tell the SM or another leader, so he knows in his own heart that he has done the requirement. If the defects in the MB were really egregious, however, I would expect a trustworthy scout to do more than that.

Here's a little twist--if he's working toward an Eagle Palm, he is required to be active in his "troop and patrol."

I think there is a fine line here between "reviewing" MBs and counseling a scout when you know, or strongly suspect, that the MB work wasn't really done. Let's take as the easiest example of this the case of the blue cards that were signed off as complete for the Scout who left camp early and couldn't have completed the MBs. Let's assume that even in this extreme case you have no authority to take away the MBs, because the MBC has awarded them. What can you do? It certainly seems to me that you can discuss the situation with the Scout and ask him how he wants to deal with it. I have to think that most scouts will want to do the MB over, or at least do the missed requirements and show you that he can do them.

"So how do I approach the SM & CC about this?" Here's my suggestion: go them and say, "I was doing some reading online and I learned something really surprising--BSA has changed the rules and we can't let Scouts sit on BORs any more. Can you believe it? As much as we may like our way of doing things, we'll have to obey the rule."

Let me also add that something is seriously wrong if boys are "failing" BORs with any frequency. If this is happening more than once in a blue moon, it is almost a sure sign that the BORs are improperly retesting scouts. The only time I have seen a BOR "fail" a scout was when he hadn't actually done all the requirements for a lower rank, was confused about it, and it somehow slipped past the SM. Even then, he didn't really "fail"--we just pointed out that he wasn't really ready for the BOR yet. His response: "Oh. OK." We've had a few BORs drag on a while (never two hours) but that was AFTER it was obvious to everyone that the boy was going to succeed, and various adults were dispensing sage advice and reminiscing. Some of it may have bored the boys, but it wasn't oppressive. I don't know--maybe it's different in a very large troop, where the adults on the BOR may not know the boy that well, or at all.

It seems to me, after looking at the requirements again, that almost all of them could be done at summer camp, except for the nights of camping. They could have climbed a mountain, done a conservation project, done all all the "show and tell" requirements, etc. there. So it may be entirely legit. There have been many conversations here about what to do if you believe a MB was not properly completed. It's been pointed out that once the badge is award by an authorized counselor, you really can't take it away. However, there are a couple of things you can do. First, if the counselors at the camp are handing out badges when all the work hasn't been done, you should talk to the camp, or find a new camp. Second, if you have a frank discussion with the boys and they agree that some of the requirements weren't done adequately, make arrangements for them to do them--you don't need to take away the MB (you probably can't)--but I think you could urge them to do the requirements so they will feel good about keeping the MB.

Backpacker, you are right, and I give up. I'm not going to waste any more time deconstructing Bob's non-answers. He either (a) thinks BSA should kick out dissenters, but doesn't want to come out and say it or (b) recognizes that it would be unethical and unscoutlike for BSA to do this, but doesn't want to say so for some unknown reason. I don't really care which it is. But let me ask this of anyone who cares about this topic: is there a credible account of a person who has had his membership revoked for expressing disagreement with the membership policies in an orderly way? We have heard from some posters that suggestions have been made that this might happen to them if they didn't drop the subject--but is there somebody who didn't drop the subject? Again, I'm not talking about somebody who picketed, or who joined an anti-scouting group, or who made a bunch of inflammatory statements--just somebody who said, hey, BSA ought to change this policy. This would be quite different from the cases of people who went to war with the Councils over some governance issue.

"If it is legal then it cannot be "unjust". While this statement is obviously untrue, it still dodges my question. I didn't ask whether it would be "unjust" for BSA to revoke membership simply for disagreeing with policies, I asked whether it would be ethical or Scoutlike for BSA to do so. I guess Bob simply cannot bring himself to answer that direct question. I can only speculate as to the reason why. To me, the answer is obvious. Let me also, as an aside, quote BSA's explanation of what "obedient" means: "A Scout follows the rules of his family, school, and troop. He obeys the laws of his community and country. If he thinks these rules and laws are unfair, he tries to have them changed in an orderly manner rather than disobeying them." Thus, a person who expresses disagreement with a BSA rule and tries to have it changed in an orderly manner is obeying the Scout Law. For BSA to punish a person for doing this would be to trample on its own Law. (Note: picketing the Service Center, in my opinion, is not "orderly" in terms of Scouting, but asking questions at high-level meetings is.)

"So do you agree that like it or not the BSA has the right to revoke memberships based on their own criteria whatever they choose that to be." If you mean the LEGAL right, I don't think anybody has ever denied this. What I keep asking you about is what is ethical and scoutlike. Surely even you, Bob, can imagine a BSA official acting unethically and revoking someone's membership unfairly or based on improper motives. What I've been saying is that, in my opinion, it would be unethical and contrary to the basic values of Scouting for BSA to revoke a person's membership for simply expressing disagreement with BSA on one of its policies as long as (1) the person was not violating any rules and (2) the disagreement didn't take some unreasonably disruptive form (like picketing the Service Center, for example). I don't see how anybody raised with American ideas about fairness and free speech could possibly disagree with this.

I also looked up the Owasippe situation, and it appears that the person who was removed from membership led a demonstration picketing outside the service center, and had considered picketing board members' homes until warned not to do so by BSA legal counsel. This is getting pretty far from constructive criticism from the inside. It does seem reasonable at some stage of escalation of conflict for BSA to kick a person out. Where exactly you draw that line I don't know--a single, respectfully worded letter to the editor of the local paper probably shouldn't do it, but picketing the service center? I'd have to say it's on the far side of the line.

It seems to me that there a few topics tangled up here, and maybe we can unravel them a bit. What we have been talking about for the last bit has been the idea that BSA would remove somebody from membership for disagreeing with BSA on some policy issue, such as the ban on gay leadership. I don't know if this has clearly been done or not, and it can be discussed on primarily ethical terms. On the other hand, the revocations jkhny complained about are not of this sort. The two leaders, Willis and Knaul, are essentially claiming that they were removed for being "whistleblowers" who pointed out irregularities or waste. But if you google them and read the news stories, it's a bit more complex than that. Knaul says that he was removed for writing a letter to the local paper criticizing the council's decision to spend money on a new service center, money he thought would be better spent on program. He appealed his removal all the way up to National, and lost. The spokesman for the coucil said that there was more to it than just the letter, that Knaul had caused trouble, that he had been warned, etc. It would certainly make for better PR for BSA if they could list this guy's wrongdoings, but from reading about him you get the impression that he may be a very stubborn and troublesome person, and maybe he really did impede the program. As for Willis, the only reasons given for his removal involved alleged sexual impropriety--which if true, would certainly justify removal. He says they aren't true (or not all true), and were just a pretext for getting rid of a whistleblower. That kind of dispute is what courts are for, and it least it doesn't constitute a case in which BSA claims to be removing somebody for his views. jkhny has said that he is a third party to removals, but apparently there was somebody removed from membership over objections to the sale of a camp--perhaps this is somebody close to jkhny, which would explain his vehemence.

There has been difference of opinion about the reach of the Establishment Clause from the beginning. For example, President Jefferson declined to proclaim a national day of prayer and thanksgiving because he thought it violated the clause. (Washington and Adams had proclaimed such days.) When you look at the history of the Bill of Rights, reasonable minds can disagree about what the framers really had in mind. But I think it's pretty clear that if the Supreme Court were to honestly apply the establishment clause tests that have been developed and refined over two centuries, it would find that it violates the clause for governments to require the recitation of the Pledge with "under God" in it, even if no student is individually required to recite it. As I posted before, when the Court actually gets the case, however, it is likely either to punt again, or to rely on the strained argument that "under God" is essentially meaningless "ceremonial Deism." It will not, however, say that it is OK for the state to promote belief in God, which is what supporters of "under God" really want. That's why I think the whole thing is really a waste of time, and can't produce a real win for either side.

Umm...the Mayflower Compact doesn't say anything about freedom of religion. The Puritans who founded the Massachusetts colony didn't believe in religious freedom--they expelled dissenters. Also, the Articles of Confederation don't say anything about it--they don't include a Bill of Rights. Nor does the Declaration of Independence say anything about it.