Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Be Prepared



While reading up on the Connecticut school shooting these past couple of days, I saw various references to this article: Gunmen's Mother was a Doomsday Prepper.
 
As America searches for answers, investigators are turning towards Nancy Lanza's supposed identification as a survivalist. The Daily Mail reports Ms Lanza stockpiled weapons and food for what she saw as America's coming economic collapse. The 'prepper' revelations may provide one insight into Adam Lanza's motive for taking so many innocent lives.

I'm certainly what one would call "a prepper." I've stockpiled food, water, toilet paper, fuel, firearms and ammunition (well, as a hunter and gun enthusiast, I've actually always "Stockpiled" those...heh.) I began doing so when I watched the coverage of Hurricane Katrina, and I saw how many folks had to go to the New Orleans Superdome and wait for the Government to come and feed them. An entire stadium full of people helpless and unprepared for extraordinary events. After that, I enthusiastically went into "prepper" mode. But after reading this smear job of "Doomsday Preppers" by the MSM, I realized something else - this is the same MSM that has reviled and attacked the Boy Scouts of America for being a hate group. And what is the Boy Scouts Motto? No, it's not GOD HATES FAGS. It's BE PREPARED.

"Be prepared for what?" someone once asked Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting, "Why, for any old thing." said Baden-Powell. The training you receive in your troop will help you live up to the Scout motto. When someone has an accident, you are prepared because of your first aid instruction. Because of lifesaving practice, you might be able to save a non-swimmer who has fallen into deep water.
But Baden-Powell wasn't thinking just of being ready for emergencies. His idea was that all Scouts should prepare themselves to become productive citizens and to give happiness to other people. He wanted each Scout to be ready in mind and body for any struggles, and to meet with a strong heart whatever challenges might lie ahead. Be prepared for life - to live happily and without regret, knowing that you have done your best. That's what the Scout motto means.


I'm a Boy Scout's of America drop out. I began scouting when I was 6 years old (Cub Scouts), but quit when I was 16. Only in hindsight do I really understand how much of an impact that program had on my life. I fired my first rifle at 10 years old at Boy Scout Camp.

BSA - Training future Doomsday Preppers and Gun Nuts!

I learned first aid, lifeguard techniques, CPR, fire making, wood chopping, knot tying, shelter improvisation, rappelling, and the woodsman's ethos. Archery. Leatherwork, water purification, camp cooking, and this fantastic knife throwing game, mumbelty peg.

BSA - Training Future Arsonists for Attacks against teh Gayz!
 
What I really learned though, was A lifelong love of the outdoors and the development of so many self-reliant and independence promoting skills.

 I learned that the organization's motto was much more than that. It is a way of life. BE PREPARED

Which is precisely why the organization has been under attack for quite some time by the Cultural Marxists and their agenda of fostering mass dependence on the State. More importantly, the Boy Scouts WAS the most popular and formative all-male space (No Gurlz Allowed) organization most Boys of my generation experienced growing up. When I think back on it, I now realize it was the ONLY all male space organization I've ever truly belonged to. As we all know, the feminist equalitarian movement could not let any all-male space go unmolested.

They don't want young boys to learn these skills. They don't want young boys to have positive masculine influences and all male leadership and to experience male group camaraderie. That might lead to independence and self-reliance! God forbid there's an organization dedicated to teaching boys how to be:


bulletTrustworthy,
bulletLoyal,
bulletHelpful,
bulletFriendly,
bulletCourteous,
bulletKind,
bulletObedient,
bulletCheerful,
bulletThrifty,
bulletBrave,
bulletClean,
bulletand Reverent. 

That's the Scout Law.

This kind of exclusionary hatred must not be allowed to continue! How dare they make young boys pledge to these principles?!?! To take such hateful oaths pledging to abide by such principles in the Scout Law!

On my honor, I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.

Such Hateful Thought Crimes must be expunged from the minds of the boys in today's Brave New World Order.


The Cultural Marxists may hide behind the rationale that they don't want the Boy Scouts to be "exclusionary" towards teh Gayz, teh Gurlz and teh athiests, but what they really aim to do is mitigate an organization that affirms positive masculine development.

And they have been succeeding.

...with just 2.8 million members, Scouting is half of what it was in 1972 when enrollment peaked. That means that Boy Scout membership in the US is down by 11% in the past decade and Cub Scouts have seen their membership drop by 23% during the same time.

The Cultural Marxist activists would claim this is PROGRESS. They probably feel a sense of victory and claim their attacks on the organization's HATE CRIMES have had an effect and stifled enrollment and membership. No doubt they've played their part in the ongoing societal revolution.

But I would venture to guess there's another reason for the decrease in membership - the increase in Single Mother households. The Boy Scouts program I remember really promoted a lot of Father and Son activities. Single Mom's were never allowed to participate or substitute in those activities if their Boys were in the program. Maybe the relationship is not causal, but I wouldn't doubt the correlation with the rise in Father-less homes has something to do with the decrease in Scouting membership.

In any case, the Boy Scouts of America is one of the last bastions of positive masculine development.

It's decline may be one of the answers to the question posed by many folks around teh interwebz about what's going wrong with today's young men.


14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Men tend to steer their boys towards scouting due to happy memories. So... in part it's a single mother problem -- no Dad around to push scouting. There's 1 single mother in our group -- but she's a special case: her husband died tragically of cancer when her son was only 7. (Happily, she is now about to remmarry.) But INTENTIONAL single mothers, which is most of them nowadays, are nowhere to be seen.

Another factor to consider. Despite it being "boy" oriented, women largely run the organization especially down at the Cub Scout level. So... likely in part it's "2 career" problem -- with no stay-at-home Moms to be den mothers, it's hard to keep the Cubscouts going. Our Cubscout group is mostly homeschoolers.

BTW... I don't recall mothers being banned from any activities when I was young. My Mom was a Den Mother and both Mom and Dad went to EVERYTHING...

Keoni Galt said...

You're right, I should have specified that they were banned only from specific Father-Son activities in the Boy Scouts, not Cub Scouts.

I recall specific Father and Son campouts and activitites where single mom's couldn't substitute. Only men and boys were allowed to participate. The boys without Father's usually brought a surrogate like an Uncle or some or Grandfather or some other Male.

And yes, Boy Scouts vs. Cub Scouts was definitely a shift from Den Mother to Troop Leader.

Kinda like old traditional societies when boys went from the domain of women to that of men.

Unknown said...

I've been thinking about getting armed, but the state of Hawaii really makes it tough to do so.

Anonymous said...

Problem is the boys scouts attract pedophiles that like da boys.

c0pperheaded said...

The pedophilia is one reason I'm hesitant to enroll my boys. The oldest is five. I was never a scout, so I'm pretty ignorant of what goes on, but would there be any reason that my boys would be at a scout function that I couldn't be at?

Anonymous said...

@Josh: Cub Scouts has built in many protections to safeguard the young boys as much as could be reasonably done. At Tiger (the youngest 'rank') the boy *has* to have their parent or guardian at every event. Den and Pack leaders have to have Youth Protection Training (two-deep protocols, grooming recognition, etc.) and my Den (I'm a Bear Den leader) has a rule of at *least* two YPT trained adults at every gathering. YPT also means that I am personally liable if something happens (border-line stuff even) and I don't report it. I've yet to encounter anything at Cub that wouldn't let a parent be there and Cubs really stresses parental involvement (and like I mentioned it is mandatory for the youngest). As long as you are personally involved in your sons' Scouting he/they should be very safe from teh gayz predator - whether those predators be a leader or older Scout.

Michael Ten said...

Nice. I was in Boy Scouts for a time. It was a good experience. Nice post! Maybe consider hiding the Blogger bar at the top of your site. You can just do it through the template modification area now. (:

mnl said...

Wonderful post. ...And yet another thing the Boy Scouts teach is simply "how to do hard things"--something sorely lacking in today's era of convenience, entitlement, and electronic pacification.

When a boy is 25 miles into a 50-mile hike and gets tired, gets blisters, or doesn't want to hike any further, there's only one way out: he has to hike another 25 miles. And guess what? He learns that bitching and moaning won't make the situation go away. He learns that playing the victim won't gain him a darn thing. He learns there's no magical helicopter that's going to whisk him out of there. Instead, he learns the only way out is to put his head down and put one foot in front of the other. And once completed, he sees he can do hard things--things he didn't expect he could do--and he survives. He looks back on that experience with pride. And for the NEXT hard thing that comes along in life--be it about school, family, or a job that's not working out the way he'd prefer--he knows the pattern. If he puts one foot in front of the other again, he'll survive that experience stronger and better as well.

Boy Scouts FTW.

-MNL, local Boy Scout Unit Commissioner.

mnl said...

@Anonymous: regarding gays, pedophilia and scouting... the irony of the Left's and MSM's complaint against scouting is that scouting needs to 1) allow gay leaders AND 2) work to eradicate pedophilia (with which I 100% agree).

But give me a freakin' break! These are two of the most conflicting positions currently held by the media and no one calls them out on it.

Now I'll be the first to say that there's no automatic correlation that makes every gay male a pedophile. Absolutely not! But the reverse is well established. That is, a significant proportion of pedophiles do identify with being gay or bisexual. Therefore, the prevalence of pedophiles within the gay community, while still low, is much higher than in the general heterosexual population. Hence, one clear way to prevent pedophilia in scouting is to maintain scouting's ban on homosexuality. But that's not a comfortable truth many are willing to admit. The media would rather trample on the well being of young boys than go against pro-homosexual "rights." Critics of scouting just can't have it both ways.

Anonymous said...

Josh:
It's not paedophilia, it's paedohysteria. The US media uses fake sexual abuse allegations to start witch-hunts against any group it doesn't like (i.e., goes against the feminist agenda).

Having sex with a so-called 'minor' is considered even worse than terrorism or mass-murder in the Anglosphere---even if those 'minors' would be considered adults in any sane (less sexually repressive) culture.

Just look what happened to the memories of great men like Joe Paterno in the US or Sir Jimmy Savile in the UK. All it took were a few fake allegations and, just like Soviet Russia, their memories have been blotted out.

Brian said...

I managed to make Eagle, and I had mixed reviews of Scouting. I saw a Scoutmaster put in prison due to a false rape charge (oh, man, was it ever false. But it was the kid's grandpa who made the allegation, and the judge had a personal grudge. We were not so politely refused to testify on his behalf). Many of the skills taught I believe are best taught by dads. However, dads don't know everything, and I learned some stuff my dad would have never been able to teach me. For that, I am grateful. Basically, use Scouting as an avenue to teach things you don't know and support what you are already trying to implant in your youngster. Do not use Scouting as a babysitter or surrogate father and most kids will get a lot out of it, I believe.

dannyfrom504 said...

was never a BS, but i learned all this as a boy growing up in southern louisiana by my houma indian grandfather.

def a lost art.

jay c said...

My son and I had some great experiences together in the Boy Scouts. There is almost no down-side to the Scouts.

Jual Masker Spirulina said...

Now I'll be the first to say that there's no automatic correlation that makes every gay male a pedophile. Absolutely not! But the reverse is well established.