NJCubScouter

Thomas Jefferson believed in a "landed aristocracy". That did not sound right, and I looked it up, and it's not right. See http://www.constitution.org/tj/jeff14.txt From this site on the writings of Jefferson: While the battle was waging in the House of Burgesses against the right of the first-born male to inherit, his opponents, under the leadership' of one Pendleton, pleaded that the eldest son might at least take a double share : " Not, " was Jefferson's retort, " until he can eat a double allowance of food and do a double allowance of work. " " My purpose," said Jefferson afterwards, "was instead of an aristocracy of wealth to make an opening for an aristocracy of virtue and talent." And from http://www.bordersstores.com/features/feature.jsp?file=wealthanddemocracy this: The debate over the compatibility of wealth and democracy is as old as the republic. From the start, concern that the egalitarian-seeming United States of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries might develop wealth concentrations to match Europe's was a worry for many but also the guarded hope of an important few. Alexander Hamilton, who favored both a financial class and an aristocracy, would have cherished the possibility of such an elite. John Adams, who thought aristocracies inevitable, would not have been surprised. Thomas Jefferson brooded that such a danger could flow all too easily from urban growth, finance, and commerce. Richard Price, the British reformer friendly to the American Revolution, warned the new nation against foreign banks and finance; and Alexis de Tocqueville, in 1837, hedged his praise for democracy in America with concern that the new industrial elite, "one of the harshest that ever existed," would bring about the "permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy." So, no, Jefferson did not favor rule by a "landed aristocracy," just the opposite. (You would have been correct if you had said Hamilton, who wanted among other things to have a president-for-life, in other words a monarch. But we ended with, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, a republic -- by which he meant a representative democracy with restrictions on what the majority could force on the minority -- if we could keep it.)

This was from last week (the first post in this thread) but I didn't respond to it then. Wheeler quoted the following from a book, "The Ideals of Greek Culture": The essence of education is to make each individual in the image of the community. I think almost everybody in our country today, especially those involved in education, would say it it is a little more complicated than that. The statement you quote may have been the attitude in ancient Greece. It may have been the attitude in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, and it probably is the attitude today in China. And I am not saying that it is not a part of education; students do need to be taught the ideals and history and values and expectations of the community and the importance of complying with them, up to a point. But they also need to be taught to think for themselves so that when they grow up, they can help improve the community. So there is no single "essence" of education; both what you have said and what I have raised are "elements" of why society educates its youth, and there are others. Philosophy, as wondrous and subtle as it may be, is simple compared to reality. Reality is complicated.

Wheeler, in an effort to get back to the spirit (if not the letter) of my previous declaration of independence from your fantasy world, I will try to keep this brief. But before I get to the main point: While you accuse me of making a "philosophical error," your posts taken together demonstrate just about every logical fallacy in the book. I think I know a little bit about debating and how logic can be used and misused. I have seen every trick in the book, and maybe I have used a couple myself (when I was getting paid to.) While you have been leisurely reading philosophy and spending endless hours in Socratic discussions with your monk friends, I argue for a living. I have had logical fallacies thrown at me by other attorneys while we were both standing in front of a judge, and after about 10 seconds' thought have had to convince the judge that I was right and the other person was wrong. Sometimes the thrower has been the judge. Sometimes the thrower has been three judges. (I haven't always won, by the way, but as someone else posted Teddy Roosevelt's famous quote, I have been "in the arena," and I like to think I have "dared greatly.") So don't try to lecture me about logic. Now to the "brief" part. What you have done in this latest post is to take two different definitions of "movement" from the dictionary and jumbled them together, to the point where your resulting definition of "youth movement" more closely resembles a school bus than than the Boy Scouts of America. Everybody else who has used the word "movement" to describe Scouting has used what you cite as the sixth definition, or something resembling it -- and that includes B-P, though I have seen no suggestion that he called Scouting a "youth movement" as opposed to a "movement." As to the "youth" in "youth movement" meaning that it would have to be either initiated or primarily led by youth, I stand by what I said. If the adjective before "movement" is a group of people, then the phrase means a movement initiated or primarly led by that group of people. If the adjective is something else (like "Oxford") it is off the point, though actually "Oxford movement" (now that I have looked it up on the Internet), if it is relevant at all, supports my point, because the Oxford movement started at Oxford, was organized from Oxford, and therefore was initiated by people from Oxford, even if leadership eventually passed to others (and I saw no indication that it did or didn't; like much British writing, the web sites I found seem to assume that the reader already knows about the subject he/she is trying to learn about.) Nobody else I know, besides you Wheeler, would say that a "youth movement" is something that "moves youth." As I said, what you have described is a school bus. A "youth movement" is a "movement," meaning an effort or campaign, initiated or led by youth.

OK, FOG, I stand corrected. I did not know there was a separate world organization for Girl Scouts/Guides. (Notice when I made the statement I said "I believe," that's my way of saying nobody can pick on me too much if I'm wrong. )

OK, I said I was going to post some statistics, and I did not want to start a new thread for them, so I am just putting them here. What I did was, look at a few members of the forum to see how many times they have posted and how long they have been members of the forum, and calculated the average number of posts per month. (Yeah, I know, I'm not sure why I did this either, I just started comparing Wheeler's and Merlyn's numbers and I got curious, and it sort of got out of hand.) The posters chosen are more-or-less a random sampling of people who seem to post "a lot," plus I threw Merlyn in there for reasons suggested in the previous post. There are a number of others who I could have chosen and who would fit in between others in the "standings." And by the way, the numbers of posts are as of some time this morning, and I rounded down the "time in forum" to the nearest whole month (except in Wheeler's case) but that wouldn't change the averages much. FOG, 1862 posts in 8 months, 232.8/mo. Wheeler, 200 posts in (almost) 1 month, 200+/mo. BobWhite, 4099 posts in 25 months, 164/mo. evmori, 2455 posts in 27 months, 90.9/mo. OGE, 2487 posts in 41 months, 60.7/mo. NJCubScouter, 1322 posts in 24 months, 55/mo. Rooster7, 1406 posts in 34 months, 41.4/mo. eisely, 1526 posts in 40 months, 38.15/mo. Merlyn, 448 posts in 36 months, 12.4/mo. Any errors are the fault of the Windows calculator program. Since the original point of my statistical voyage was related to who was being "critical" of the BSA in their posts, I suppose that in fairness I should add the following, and it all is of course my own opinion: Virtually all of Merlyn's posts have been "critical," and a very high percentage of Wheeler's (that discuss the BSA at all) have as well. FOG criticizes some aspects of the current BSA on a fairly regular basis, and obviously I criticize the BSA's current position on one particular issue, though I'd put the overall percentage of my posts that have been about this issue as probably less than 25 percent. Bob and eiseley are at somewhere around zero percent "critical," and in Bob's case that is only because I am not allowing for negative percentages. As for the others, the percentages would be low, and the criticism when it has appeared has been mild. But I think this confirms what I was saying in my previous post... probably in too much detail.

Well, Wheeler, thanks for answering my question, finally. And leaving aside your implication that I don't "understand reality" -- I think I understand it pretty well -- when you cut through all the irrelevant analogies, what you are saying actually does make sense up to a point. What I think you are really saying is that you deal with issues one at a time, so you might be defending the BSA on one issue and criticizing it on another. That's ok, but as I said in your case, only "up to a point." I think the thing that makes your posts inconsistent is a matter of degree, and perhaps one of timing. As I pointed out in the thread to which this thread is a response, you rode into this forum on a big white horse as a "defender" of the BSA against its "attackers," and then suddenly you started criticizing the BSA with much greater intensity than anyone else. And when I say greater intensity, I mean in terms of the "language" that you use, the percentage of your posts that are critical of the BSA, and the number and length of your posts. There is one other person, Merlyn, who surpasses you in the percentage of his posts that are critical of the BSA (at or near 100 percent), but consider that Merlyn has been in this forum for slightly more than 3 years and has posted 448 times, while you reach your one-month mark tomorrow and have exactly 200 posts (maybe a couple more before I post this.) (For statistics buffs out there, Merlyn averages 12.4 posts a month while Wheeler will exceed 200 in his first month. I did a little more looking at some numbers, which I will put in another post, I am not sure what thread it should go in.) And then there is the length of most of your posts, which requires no further comment for anyone who has been reading them. And then there is the point on which you are attacking the BSA, namely the involvement of females, and the associated "language" issue. There are a few people in this forum who basically agree with you on the involvement of females, though not in the near-hysterical terms that you use. But most do not agree, and these include men who have extensive experience in dealing both with female Scouters and young female Venturers (OGE first and foremost in the second category.) Plus, there have been women in Cub Scouting almost since its inception (I believe the Den Mother role became official in the 1940's), and women in increasing numbers in all positions in Boy Scouting since the 80's, and guess what? The programs are still here. I suppose that most boys who graduate Scouting are not necessarily ready to grab a gun and fight the Boers (a little B-P reference there), but I think this was also true in the all-male-leader version of Boy Scouting in which I grew up. In fact, my father has told me that when he turned 18 (in June 1944) after being a Scout from age 12, he wasn't ready to fight a war either, but like many men of his generation, he didn't exactly get a choice. As he says (with some poetic license), "When I graduated high school they were waiting for me with a rifle and a bus ticket." They shipped him and hundreds of thousands of others off for a few weeks of training, and they were "ready." (Fortunately for him, he got sent for some additional training, and then different parts of the war kept ending right before he was going to be sent into combat.) But the point is, they didn't great "ready" in the Boy Scouts. Regardless of how you might interpret some of what B-P said, that is NOT what the program is all about.

Marty, a couple of years ago my son's Cub pack camped on the Massachusetts, but we did not go due to a combination of family obligations as well as, well, I really wasn't excited about the idea of driving 4 or 5 hours to sleep on a ship. My son was disappointed, but I did promise him that when we got the chance to go to the New Jersey (which I think had just been opened to the public at that time), we would go. I did not know about the other vessels in Falls River, Mass. Now that my son is a bit older and better able to understand and appreciate what he is seeing, the trip to the Massachusetts may make more sense, even just as a family day-trip rather than an encampment with the Boy Scouts. As I suggested in my earlier post, I think age is a factor, I am not really sure what the Cub-age boys really got out of the trip, as opposed to my son and the rest of his troop, who thought everything was "totally cool." They would have been even happier if they could have fired a few shells out of the big guns, but hey, you can't have everything.

Hey, yeah, we all seem to have been stripped of our rank. Maybe it's just temporary. Or maybe we talked about it so much that someone got irritated? We were just having fun with it, really.

Eamonn, as it turns out, the answer is yes, you get preferential treatment on the battleship New Jersey for having five stars... but only if you happen to have been Admiral William Halsey. One of the many things I learned on my tour was that the New Jersey served as Admiral Halsey's flagship during a number of Pacific battles during 1944-45. They have his office preserved with his name and five stars on the door (which may be a bit of poetic license, as he was not awarded his fifth star until December 1945, after the war was over.) By the way, I know this is not the "Camping" topic, but what a neat trip this was! Anyone within reasonable distance of Camden, New Jersey (right across the river from Philadelphia) might want to consider it for their troop. (There were a few Cub packs there as well, but I don't think I'd recommend it for Cubs other than Webelos, for a variety of reasons.) Although the ship is now open for public tours, this was a special Scouting "encampment," which started on 5 p.m. Saturday after the regular public tour day ended, and we were off the ship by 9 the next morning, at which point the regular customers were starting to line up. One thing that some of our boys got to do which I don't think you get on the regular tour was serve as honor guard for the flag ceremonies in the evening and morning, and to dole out food to everybody else on the ship. (My son lucked out in being tabbed for the evening honor guard and not galley duty.) The cost (some of which was picked up by our troop) was $45 per person, which included dinner, breakfast, a 2-hour tour, free time to roam around (only in certain areas! For some reason they didn't want people visiting the cruise missile launcher unescorted) and of course, the deluxe sleeping accommodations. (Deluxe if you are a sardine, that is. I usually move around a lot in my sleep, but I had to pretty much stay put to avoid the guy above me thinking he was in an earthquake.) But, other than a bit of back and neck pain the next morning, a great trip!

I believe I read this decision when it came out, and it made sense to me. The state set up a program that benefits only certain charities, and it has criteria based on state public policy, and the BSA does not meet the criteria. It is different from the Dale case, in which the state statute was interpreted to mean that the BSA could not enforce their membership standards at all, and the Supreme Court decided that that was unconstitutional. In this case the BSA is not being prohibited from enforcing their membership standards. They are being denied a benefit because they don't qualify for the benefit. The council(s) involved will just have to raise the money elsewhere, and I hope they can. What I really hope, of course, is that the BSA stops putting its councils (and more importantly, its units and their members) in the middle of a political and religious "culture war" that the BSA has no business being in the middle of. I do need to point out, in the interests of technical legal correctness, that the word "lost" in the first paragraph of the news article is somewhat misleading. When the Supreme Court denies an application for writ of certiorari, as it appears to have done here, it does not "decide" the case, it simply makes a decision not to hear the case. If the same issue comes up somewhere else, the Supreme Court could still decide to hear that case, and decide the issue differently than the Second Circuit decided it -- or the same way. The lawyer for the government in that hypothetical future case could not cite this "decision" as a precedent for why the Supreme Court shouldn't hear the future case; legally, it is a non-event as far as future cases are concerned. Or to put it another way, they did not "lose" a "U.S. Supreme Court appeal" because technically, there was no appeal to lose. It is interesting nevertheless.

So Wheeler, it's ok for you to criticize the BSA, but it's not ok for anyone else to do so? I happen to disagree with the BSA's current position on one issue, and have obviously posted about it on a number of occassions, but I'd guess that you have you have expended more words critical of the BSA, and in "stronger" terms overall, in the last 3 weeks or so, than I have in the past 2 years. I've asked you before to explain the different standard you are apparently using to measure the actions of others as opposed to those of yourself, but you never answered. And I do realize that I will probably regret asking you a question, but I am asking anyway.

Well, I did refrain from responding to Wheeler for awhile, but this seems to be a direct response to a direct statement that I made. (Though obviously I was not the first to suggest in this thread that "youth movement" means "youth-led," FOG was.) So, Wheeler says: I do have a question. How does somebody take the leap that if it is called a "youth movement" that only the youth run it????? Now employing the Socratic method to the above opinion, if it is called the "Oxford movement" does this mean that only people named "Oxford" get to run it? First of all, I don't think I or anyone else said "only." But I do think "youth movement" implies at least predominantly youth-run. I don't think it's a leap. It's how people talk, and write. The name of a certain type of people in front of the word "movement" means a "movement" by that type of people. If what proceeds "movement" is something other than a type of people, it would mean something different. If it's an "ideology," such as "women's rights movement" or "Zionist movement," then it implies a movement in favor of that ideology, and leadership by those who favor that ideology, regardless of whether they are members of the group that would "benefit." But if, instead of "women's rights movement," it were just "women's movement," that would imply leadership by women. I don't know what an "Oxford movement" is or was, so I can't answer that one, but "Oxford" does not sound like the name of a type of people, so it doesn't fit the pattern and is therefore irrelevant to the discussion. And, as for "Are we all sure that it is a movement???"... well, no, I think some of us didn't think it is. I said that I don't think it is, at least not on the national level and below, which are the levels where the vast majority of us actually have routine contact with it. (As opposed to the worldwide level.)

I'm wondering what the original Greek is for "incredibly stubborn."

By the way: Telos, wasn't that the planet in the original Star Trek pilot episode, where Captain Christopher Pike and the Vina are living out their lives under the illusion that they are handsome and beautiful (respectively) rather than horribly mangled, disfigured and/or paralyzed? (It's very close, actually: Talos IV. Maybe Gene Roddenberry read Greek philosophy when he wasn't making tv shows.) Sorry. It's tough to let a Star Trek reference go by, just like Eamonn couldn't let the Beatles reference go by.

Hey, suddenly I have 5 stars! Woo woo! The thrill of victory! (Of course we all know what follows right behind "the thrill of victory," that's what happens tomorrow, probably, when I plummet back down to a star and a half.) Oh well, I won't be around to see the ratings ping-pong around for most of the weekend, I will be camping with the troop on the battleship New Jersey. (I guess it's still called camping even though we'll be sleeping in the old crew decks on the ship. If I'm in a sleeping bag, it's camping.)

This is so funny. I'm guessing this is probably the first time in his life that OGE has been called a "socialist."

Dan says about Wheeler, to whom I am not responding: What do you think you taught those 2 scouts at the library, when you asked them if they wanted to be a man? I bet they thought you where trying to pick them up! I was thinking pretty much the same thing about Wheeler's report of his conversations with these 2 teenagers. Seriously, it's not a good idea to do something like that. Even if the kids did not think that, the person at the next terminal or behind the next bookshelf (one of their parents? Or a youth-protection-services worker in the library looking for a book?) might think that. I personally would not want some 43-year-old stranger in a library talking to my son about becoming a "man," it gives me the creeps just thinking about it. Plus, even with that issue aside, it is quite possible that when Wheeler has these conversations with these teenaged boys, he may be contradicting the values and beliefs that their parents have tried to instill in them. It's not his place to do that.

SA, Hmm, usually I'm pretty good on 60s TV trivia but that's a new one on me. I looked on the Internet for "my stars" but all I know now that I didn't know before is that I can get a star named after a loved one of my choice at starnamer.net for only $25.95 for the basic certificate, $69.95 for the Deluxe Gift Package. Operators are standing by.

I don't know, Packsaddle, it could be an issue, "vote trading" doesn't sound very democratic, oops, I mean Republican, I mean republicish. But as Ayn Rand might say, if it works for you, do it, and don't worry about that poor schnook with 0.5 stars, if he deserved more he'd have 'em already. Or as Plato might say, beware of 21st Century Greek philosophers bearing library cards. But civil disobedience? I don't know if I'd go that far, after all, it's not like we're issuing our own marriage licenses or anything. ::Running away fast::

Momentarily taking this way more seriously than it deserves, I have noticed that the "oddity" I pointed out on the second or third day of the rating system still seems to exist, that is, I have not noticed anyone, at any time, having a rating other than 0.5, 1.5, 2.5, 4.5 or 5. The first time I pointed this out, I figured it would "even out" over time, much like baseball batting averages do during the early part of a baseball season, as more and more at bats are factored in and the number of possible averages gets greater and greater until almost every whole number is "taken." That is what I thought would happen here, so that there would be SOMEONE with a "whole number" of stars (other than 5), and/or someone in the "gap" between 2.5 and 4.5, the most likely candidate being 3.5. But from all the posts I have seen, that has not happened. I don't think anyone has had 3.5 at any time. (When I first saw my ranking I thought it was 3.5, and I think I mentioned that in a post, but I have a feeling I counted wrong, and the second time I saw it, it was 2.5.) Of course, even the "gap" between 2.5 and 4.5 does not explain why Rooster dropped from 4.5 to 1.5 with no "stop" at 2.5. That seems odd too. Well, at least the ratings system has some self-entertainment value...

Baiting? In my profession we call that "cross-examination." I think a certain amount of "baiting" goes on in this forum, particularly in Issues and Politics but not always, and up to a point it is just part of the give-and-take of discussion and debate. (Or to put it another way, the first line of this post is only partly a joke.) I have been "accused" of "baiting" a couple of times myself, and have had it done to me, though of course in my opinion I never rose to the bait. What I mean specifically is that if a person has made a statement that I disagree with, and I believe that the statement is inconsistent with something else the person believes, I have on occasion asked a question to find out for certain (and have everybody else find out for certain) whether the person does indeed believe that inconsistent thing. Or if I suspect that a person's opinion is based in a larger belief system that if fully aired, will defeat the person's argument in the minds of readers, I have occasionally asked questions to draw out that larger belief system. As I say, it has been done to me also. I don't think there's anything wrong with it, as long as there is no deception involved. Usually, a question is simply a question. But when that statement is accompanied by a factual scenario that is misleading, or becomes misleading through further questions and answers, that is where I think "the line" can be crossed. And Ed, the prime example that I can think of is the one that you are undoubtedly referring to in your post.

This is a local council brochure for pete's sake. You don't really believe that a swarm of marketing experts is checking every detail of each photo do you? There you go again, Bob, with your typical tactic of making up something that someone didn't say and then ridiculing it. No "swarm" would have been necessary and no "marketing experts" would have been involved with the photo I am talking about. One look by the SE probably would have caught it, and I can guarantee you that most of the Commissioner-types who I know would have caught it with one look. There are no uniform police. Sure, Bob, whatever you say.

I'm not sure that the trend of this forum in becoming DictionaryDebate.com is necessarily the best thing, but since this one is squarely Scouting-related, I'll play this time. First of all, what is "Scouting?" There is a World Organization of the Scout Movement that I believe includes both the BSA and GSUSA, as well as (obviously) Boy and Girl Scout and coed Scouting organizations from all over the world. At the worldwide level, the only one that officially uses the word "movement" to my knowledge, I think "movement" is at least partially accurate. There also is an "organization" there, but it really does not provide a "program," as we think of a Scouting program. (For what it does do, see www.scout.org.) The "program" is provided by the national Scouting organizations. Leaving aside the other U.S. "Scouting" organization, the GSUSA (but with the greatest respect), is the BSA a movement? It really looks more like a national organization providing a program, through a rather unique arrangement with other organizations (the CO's.) I have heard the statement that "Scouting is not an organization, it's a movement." (And now I have heard that B-P said it's not a program, its a movement, though I think B-P was using a bit of "poetic license" there.) But there can be no doubt that there is a program, and that there is an organization consisting of at least "National" and its subordinate "levels," and (for purposes of this discussion at least) the councils. That organization offers the program to COs who may form units based on a charter agreement with the BSA, which requires them to follow rules, regulations, press releases (oops, sorry), etc. Because of the sort of unique three-way arrangement between National/council, CO and unit, one might say that the units are not really "part" of a single organization with National at the top of the pyramid, such as might exist with an Elks or Moose Lodge or something like that, which have more "typical" hierarchical structures. Because of that, there is at least an element of "movement" when one looks at "Scouting" as a unified whole. But I think that the "organization" and "program" elements are predominant over the "movement" aspect. Now as for "Scouting" being a "youth movement," there I have to agree with FOG. It was not initiated by youths, and on a worldwide, national or council level, it is run by adults, not youths. So it is not a "youth movement." The BSA does have some (two out of three, or three out of four if you count Varsity) major program divisions that use "youth leadership" as one of their methods, in other words, as part of the "program." This manifests itself in boy-run (or boy-led) Boy Scout troops and youth-run (or youth-led Venturing Crews), which are critical elements in providing the program the way it is supposed to be provided, with a tip of the campaign hat to what B-P said as OGE posted in the other thread. But "Scouting" also includes Cub Scout packs, where youth leadership is not a method, because it is not age-appropriate (or in modern lingo, developmentally appropriate.) (One could quibble about this a little bit; preparing a boy for Boy Scouts is one of the "purposes" of Cub Scouts, and I think Cub Scouting does instill an interest in leadership, by providing both adult and boy role-models for leadership (Den Chiefs being the boy role models); and then there is the "Denner" position that is sort of a junior counterpart to the "true" leadership roles a boy can aspire to after becoming a Boy Scout. But "leadership" per se is not a Cub Scouting method and, clearly, packs are not boy-run, though on a bad day a pack meeting may seem boy-overrun.) So that's my take. I don't think that "youth movement" is a correct term for Scouting. And as if to agree with me, the brochure from my council that I discussed in another thread calls Scouting "one of the largest youth-serving organizations in the country." That description seems more accurate.

So who really gives a flip about the stars anyhow? Well, I have begun placing just a bit more credence in them ever since I went back up from 1.5 stars to 2.5. (Just kidding.)

Ed says: Patrol members are demos? Well, I know this line has already been used in the forum recently, but: It's all Greek to me!