Rick_in_CA

Wow, I never thought I would get down voted for simply quoting a part of the Scout Law. All I said was disagree, but do it respectfully and scout like. Sigh...

From the 1911 edition of the Scout Handbook (emphases is mine): Being scout like requires us to show respect to those who's religious beliefs are different from ours. Respect does not require agreement. Just be careful about throwing words like "evil", "immoral" and "corrupt" around when referring to the beliefs of others.

Great story. Thanks for sharing!

The whole "don't talk to strangers" thing can actually be dangerous. The odds of a child being kidnapped or assaulted by a stranger is less than their needing help from one (such as getting lost). There was a story from not too long ago (I think it got discussed on this forum) about a young boy that got lost in the woods when his family was out hiking. It took days to find him because he was hiding from the searchers, because they were "strangers". There are others examples where kids failed to get help for themselves or others because it required "talking to strangers". And don't get me started on the "don't leave kids in cars" hysteria.

I always enjoyed Hogan's Heroes (it's still a guilty pleasure of mine). Most of the cast were WW2 veterans, and the actors playing the main German roles were Jewish (I read this was deliberate). In fact several members of the cast were holocaust survivors and lost family members in the camps. So I don't think they were trying to suggest the Nazis were just fun loving guys.

Interesting thread! One thing that isn't clear from Bob J. Tilllerson obit, is did he complete all the requirements before leaving for the Navy like most of the examples given here? Or were some of the requirements waved on account of his ww2 service?

Interesting bit: It refers to his service in the Navy during WW2. I wonder how common such late Eagle Scouts were after the war? This is the first I heard of the practice.

Interesting question. An article in Wikipedia says that it cost around $50 million to put on the 2010 jamboree with the military paying $8 million of that. However I can't find a reference for the $50 million number so I don't know where that number comes from and how it breaks down (for example, how much is payed for by the participants fees).

The BSA actually wasn't a party in the lawsuit, but the court ruled that the plaintiffs didn't have standing to file the suit, so there wasn't a ruling on the merits of the case. The case became moot when the BSA decided to build the Summit. The case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winkler_v._Rumsfeld Like most things, there are probably multiple reasons why the BSA made the decision it did, but I read somewhere that one of the reasons was the fear that a future lawsuit would win and reduce even more the support the BSA gets from the government.

I thought one of the drivers for the Summit was that the US Army decided it couldn't "host" (i.e. pay for) the BSA Jamborees anymore. So the BSA needed a place to hold the Jamborees going forward. None of the existing BSA properties are even close too having the capacity to host 50,000 plus scouts at once. I suppose they could have chosen an existing site to upgrade, but how many properties does National actually own? Are any of them large enough? Or would it have made sense for National to drop a huge investment into a council owned property somewhere? I suppose they could have done what the US Army did - base the whole thing around temporary infrastructure that they install and remove for every jambo. But, that would probably be a more expensive choice in the long run? Loosing the "special relationship" with the US Government really cost the BSA a lot.

Didn't the BSA argue that the congressional charter was meaningless during the Dale case? Or one of the related cases at the time? I remember something about since the charter implied that the BSA was a public accommodation, the BSA argued that the charter was a meaningless historical artifact or something like that.

I remember a conversation I had with a minister some years ago about the phrase "duty to God" (it was not in a scouting context). A Duty is a "commitment or obligation to someone or something". This minister explained that he didn't owe any obligation or commitment to God, just one to himself and his fellow man. God gives us a moral direction, but the obligation to follow that moral direction is to ourselves and our fellow man, not to him. Now not every minister or faith would agree with him, but it is one way of looking at things. And how does that relate to the line "To do my duty to God and my country"? Well if you really believe that you do not owe a "duty" to your God, then there isn't anything you need to do to fulfill that duty.

I agree with this. My personal opinion is that this is all part of a process to get rid of the three Gs and get the BSA out of the culture wars. If you look at the pre-Dale BSA, who were the largest group of charter orgs? Public schools and the US military. Both of those are gone because of the fallout around the Dale case. If the BSA can put the three Gs too rest, then they can get back into the public schools and the military. I think National is willing to trade short term losses in order to position itself for long term gains. The problem (in my opinion) is that National knows where it wants to get, but doesn't really know how to get there. Which partly explains why National is handling the switch to coed so poorly.

and What I find interesting is that these are some of the very same traits we want for our girls as they grow up to become women (and nothing @@fred johnson or @@Tampa Turtle have posted implies that they would disagree with this). So when many people talk about "turning boys into men" what they really mean is "helping male children grow up to be adults of good character".

Here is an good story about two UK cub scouts that used their first aid training to save their grandmother's life. A good reminder that it's not really about the earning the patch. http://scouts.org.uk/news/2017/10/blog-cubs-save-grandmothers-life/