THIS MEANS WAR!:The culture war is real and BSA is its Pork Chop Hill

[Hiromi 9]

http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3484376.html

 

 

Why There is a Culture War

 

By John Fonte

 

Gramsci and Tocqueville in America

 

"While economic Marxism appears to be dead, the Hegelian variety articulated by Gramsci and others has not only survived the fall of the Berlin Wall, but also gone on to challenge the American republic at the level of its most cherished ideas. For more than two centuries America has been an "exceptional" nation, one whose restless entrepreneurial dynamism has been tempered by patriotism and a strong religious-cultural core. The ultimate triumph of Gramscianism would mean the end of this very "exceptionalism." America would at last become Europeanized: statist, thoroughly secular, post-patriotic, and concerned with group hierarchies and group rights in which the idea of equality before the law as traditionally understood by Americans would finally be abandoned. Beneath the surface of our seemingly placid times, the ideological, political, and historical stakes are enormous."

 

 

[Lisabob 13]

Now here's something funny about the notion of European societies as "thoroughly secular;" they aren't. In fact, last I checked, many of them had an official religion and all. And ah yes, there are all those explicitly "Christian" parties in many European countries too. Check out the Christian Social Union (partner to the current ruling party in Germany, the Christian Democratic Union - and a very conservative Catholic party to boot) as one of many, many examples. Try telling the CSU that they're secular and you may find yourself with a big Bavarian pretzel lodged far down your throat for your efforts.

[Hiromi 9]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-08-10-europe-religion-cover_x.htm

From USA TODAY

Religion takes a back seat in Western Europe

 

"The separation between church and state in Europe is becoming standard. After vigorous debate, European leaders rejected any mention of the role of Christianity in a new constitution for the 25 European Union countries. Italy's nominee for justice minister of the EU, Rocco Buttiglione, was rejected because he was openly religious and condemned homosexuality.

 

Asked by USA TODAY about the consequences of the decline of religion, Buttiglione said, "If we ignore our pasts and try to create a Godless society where things like money or ambition or property are worshiped, then the society loses. ... It is a battle we are fighting at the current time.""

 

"In 1900, almost everyone in Europe was Christian. Now, three out of four people identify themselves as adherents to Christianity. At the same time, the percentage of Europeans who say they are non-religious has soared from less than 1% of the population to 15%. Another 3% say they don't believe in God at all, according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity.

 

In 12 major European countries, 38% of people say they never or practically never attend church, according to the World Values Survey in 2000. France's 60% non-attendance rate is the highest in that group. In the USA, only 16% say they rarely go to church."

 

 

 

 

[Hiromi 9]

Excerpted from On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth by Jay Mechling, published by the University of Chicago Press. 2001

 

"The religious conservatives who control the national office of the Boy Scouts see themselves as important troops in the culture wars. If religion, masculinity, and citizenship are as tangled as the rhetoric of the Boy Scouts and others seems to make them and if, as so many historians and social critics have suggested, there is evidence everywhere of a "crisis in white masculinity," a status revolution in which white males feel like the beleaguered class, then it makes sense that the men running the Boy Scouts see the atheists and their ACLU lawyers as agents of an assault upon masculinity and whiteness (symbolized by certain European religions and the very American religion of Mormonism). The link between white masculinity and religion at century's end explained why the Boy Scouts would not make this compromise, while the Girl Scouts would; the Girl Scouts, quite simply, have no stake in the masculinity part of the tangle."

 

[Bob White 20]

How many cultural wars is this for the U.S. now, I 've lost count.

 

Even if every registered poster on this forum banded together (on either sides of any philosophical position, we could not stop someone from criticizing whatever the current "culture" is for some segment of the country, even the Scouting movement.

 

But, we each have the ability to improve the quality of scouting delivered in the unit we are supposed to be serving. Perhaps our concerns would be better applied to a local battle for bettering scouting in the unit we serve, than being concerned over a "cultural war" that will never end?(This message has been edited by Bob White) (This message has been edited by a staff member.)

[Hiromi 9]

Bob,

 

Why would you assume that culture wars can never end? I agree that they may turn into long and protracted holding actions, but wars often have victors.

 

"Never in our time?" I dont think the Civil Wars toll on this nation could have been foreseen by the culture warriors of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

 

American Leftists were blind to Stalins barbaric evil even when they saw it with their own eyes.

 

Rwandans were dealing with a culture war until it started using machetes.

 

There is real power to change our nation in the public schools. If the left continues to train- certify, and promote teachers and write the curriculum, how long will it be until our frog begins to cook?

 

I would not assume that this culture war is a safe status quos which holds no real consequence and no tangible outcomes.

 

You can defeat a nation without firing a shot. You can kill its spirit by turning its children against their parents.

 

I have seen first hand the promotion of hatred and mistrust and condescension towards the family, parents, the military, the boy scouts, Christians, and even God - in reputable colleges and Universities - and all in the name of an enlightened cosmopolitanism.

 

Sin is pass. So too is patriotism, belief in God, and the American Dream.

 

They see the enemy in the American middleclass bourgeois consumer who is using up the planet's resources and in doing so warming it and ruining it for everyone else and the polar bears.

 

This kind of insanity is becoming entrenched as a common intellectual currency in the academies and the high schools and will soon be fully infiltrating the grammar schools.

 

But working on bettering our own scout units is doing our part as well Bob. With that I fully concur!

 

As I have mentioned part of the preparedness I teach my scouts is to be ready to wage spiritual battle with a tenacious opponent. We recite the prayer to Saint Michael after every meeting. It is a martial prayer. And these boys get it that evil is real. It is we adults that so often try and tidy things up by pretending not to notice the 700 pound drooling fiend in the corner.

 

Now lock and load men- Hannibal is at the Gates!!

 

Pappy

(This message has been edited by Pappy)(This message has been edited by Pappy)

[Hiromi 9]

Seven Signs of a Falling Nation

No government, kingdom or society lasts forever. Here are seven factors that contributed to ancient Romes demisewarning signs that exist today within the nations of the American and British peoples.

By Bruce A. Ritter

 

http://www.realtruth.org/articles/070831-002-ssoafn.html?cid=EMAF001

 

 

 

(This message has been edited by Pappy)

[evmori 11]

Just what we need! Another cut & paste thread from Pappy!

[packsaddle 753]

Being from the South, you'll understand why I have to ask, what is 'culture'?

[OldGreyEagle 5]

So, no member of the BSA could be Lberal? Or a Democrat? Is that what is being said?

 

Pack, I do a lot of travel in the South, I know, as I have been told, it ain't over yet

[packsaddle 753]

OGE, heh, heh, or at least that's what the guy down the road thinks, who flies the Confederate Flag above the US Flag. But I doubt that we'll be able to get those slaves back...maybe have to try for a different group, wink, wink. If we can just get those 'liberal' types to back off.

 

I see a bit of irony that Pappy, who has - more than anyone else I've read on these forums - carved out a unique, unabashedly 'local option' unit...this very same Pappy...is afraid that there is a 'culture war', whatever. If ANYONE is engaged in such a thing, HE's the one! Most of the rest of us are trying to do what Bob White suggested a couple of messages back. And that is a whole lot more along the lines of conformity than what Pappy described for that unit.

 

Edited part: typo, sorry.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

[Hiromi 9]

Old Grey Eagle,

 

I don't think being a liberal or a conservative should have anything to do with scouting. But the scouts, along with many of our institutions, are under (cultural) fire by an organized and highly motivated movement with a programme of deconstructing the republic along "identity political lines."

 

I personally would love to see BSA successful amongst all American so-called groups. I think it is an incorrect point of view to put BSA in this fight. But their is a programme to balkanize America along identity lines, and this bodes poorly for BSA.

 

The conservatives didn't preemtively put their faith or their love of country or scouting into a culture war. The shifting sands of the political landscape turned something as apparently wholesome and uncontroversial as boy scouting into something seen as seedy, fascistic, and highly controversial. It was the left that made scouting into a lightening rod, not the right. (Not historical revision- Lisabob.)

 

The right has only recently begun to fight back in the media and on the ground against the lefts' stranglehold on academia with the actions of such men as David Horowitz.

 

The world changed - not scouting. Its values are timeless, and some of those values are what infuriate the far-left. (Not your FDR/JFK/LBJ/Lieberman types of democrats but the new Lefts brand of Democrats that are fighting a culture war against the perceived hegemonic-bogey man of white male imperialist capitalist environmentally ruinous religiously intolerant culture. The Maxine Waters/ AL Gore/ Michael Moore variety).

 

I don't see right wing watchdog groups and attorneys trying to squeeze out groups that don't share conservative values. Unless aborting children is a liberal activity.)

 

I've looked for these groups. I want to sign up.

 

And Packsaddle. Are you pulling my halter chain? What is Culture?

 

In the American Northern Midwest at least, culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate,") generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance.(Like scouting, rituals and rights of passage, etc.)

 

Different definitions of "culture" reflect different theoretical bases for understanding, or criteria for evaluating, human activity. (Marxists might see culture as radically different as do most red-blooded bible reading Americans- they do not make many of the same basic suppositions about what constitutes relevant history- values, social institutions, etc.)).

 

Culture is manifested in music, literature, painting and sculpture, theater and film and other things (Like scouting Although some people identify culture in terms of consumption and consumer goods (as in high culture, low culture, folk culture, or popular culture) anthropologists understand "culture" to refer not only to consumption goods, but to the general processes which produce such goods and give them meaning, and to the social relationships and practices in which such objects and processes become embedded. For them, culture thus includes technology, art, science, as well as moral systems.

 

Anthropologists most commonly use the term "culture" to refer to the universal human capacity to classify, codify and communicate their experiences symbolically. This capacity has long been taken as a defining feature of the humans. That is why the best place to influence a change in culture and to subvert the norms we take for granted is to employ legions of professors and school teachers to indoctrinate our youth. It is also the reason why forming children is so important - children are formable- and correct schooling- spiritual formation and scouting (Wholesome instructive play) are vital to a strong nations' future.

 

Pappy- with help from his friend Wikipedia.

 

(This message has been edited by Pappy)

[Bob White 20]

Best of luck Pappy,

I hope you get better results changing the "cullture" to fit your vision than you have had changing the scouting program in the unit to fit your vision.

[OldGreyEagle 5]

Interesting point there Pack. Like I said, I have traveled extensively in the south for many years. The sight of the Auto Junkyard with the Stars and Bars prominently displayed became common. After 9/11, I noticed a twist, I saw one place with the Stars and Stripes displayed and a banner underneath that read, We will never forget and then on the other side of the gate was the Stars and Bars and the banner, The South will Rise Again. Cant tell if that is a mixed message or regional pride.

 

I do need a clarifying point, Pork Chop Hill refers to two battles in The Korean War, the good guys won the first one and didnt the second, so when its mentioned the "Culture War" involves the BSA and Pork Chop Hill, which battle are we talking about?

 

 

[Hiromi 9]

Hey Bob,

 

How do you know how much luck I have been having with my scouting unit? Have you been speaking to your 'Friend' at Illowa Council again? Havent you already learned that you cant always believe what you here from that guy?

 

The relative success or failure of my little Scouting unit has really nothing to do with any arguments I have presented on this thread. Youre the one who has argued for a credibility litmus test for posters in this forum.

 

What should the minimum retention and recruitment requirement of a Scouters unit be for them to be eligible to contribute Bob? (Assuming the forum member is a scouter with a unit).

 

I run my unit mostly along BSA lines. I have a substantially larger denner program for my Boy Scouts than most units- but this is hardly radical or conservative. The military elements I introduced are there to keep the boys motivated and organized. And we have argued on other threads the relative merit of this approach.

 

So I would appreciate sticking to the thread at hand- and not making it about me or my Cub or Boy Scout unit and the way it is or is not run.

 

Pappy

 

 

 

(This message has been edited by Pappy)