Guest post from John Wilder at Wilder Wealthy Wise.
“Envy the country that has heroes, huh? I say pity the country that needs them.” – Reign of Fire
My book on the Nordic nations is really difficult to write. I’m not sure I can Finnish.
There are institutions in this country that are fundamental in shaping it. Two, in particular, helped define the 20th century in the United States of America:
- Hollywood®
- Boy Scouting
Both were a product of the American expansion between 1850 and 1940, and both were forged in the American West.
Boy Scouting? American?
The official story is that Boy Scouts was brought to the United States from Great Britain. In the immortal words of Jules, “Please allow me to retort”: Sir Robert Baden-Powell was the guy who “officially” started Boy Scouting, but given his aristocratic upbringing, Baden-Powell’s idea of camping was spending an afternoon on the patio with only one servant and no ice for his gin.
The truth is much more American: Baden-Powell based Scouting on Frederick Russell Burnham, who was born in Minnesota and crossed paths with outlaws and thieves as he learned the tricks from old cavalry scouts that served in the Indian Wars. Once all the Indians were killed or in a reservation, Burnham got bored and hitched a ride to South Africa to kill and conquer that continent, too.
In South Africa, Burnham was eventually made Chief of Scouts of the British South African Army in one of the Boer Wars. The Boer Wars were that time when the British found out that the Boers were sitting on the biggest gold strike in the world, and decided that all that was required was to get those pesky Boers off of all of that obviously British gold. I first heard of Burnham while reading this amazing true story (LINK). It’s long-ish, but amazing because it’s true.
Why do Scoutmasters wear that hat? This guy. This picture was taken after he was personally decorated by the King with the second-highest award given by Britain to soldiers, and given a permanent rank in the British Army. Also given personally by the King.
Why do Boy Scouts wear neckerchiefs? Because Burnham wore a neckerchief. In Baden-Powell’s estimation, the goal of Boy Scouts was to turn boys into men like Burnham.
Scouting was built on just that American ideal – individual ruggedness and preparedness. Baden-Powell said it very well, “A Scout is never taken by surprise; he knows exactly what to do when something unexpected happens.”
Scouting, in one quote that I read sometimes back, was based in the preparation of an ideal citizen – one that could contribute, one that could learn, and one that was not reliant on the government. It created capable, rugged boys who in turn became capable, rugged men.
Scouting found very fertile ground in the United States. Very soon there was a shortage of little old ladies to escort across the street, and they had to take shifts so the Boy Scouts could assist.
I kid.
But there are very few organizations (outside of churches) that have done as much good for the United States as the Boy Scouts.
Sadly, Boy Scouts is essentially dead. The last decade killed it.
Well, you can’t say the Left isn’t good at something.
It had already been on life support. The peak number of Boy Scouts was in the early 1970s at about five million boys. To have a similar number today would mean that there would be ten million Scouts. There aren’t. I expect that the number (when it is announced later this month) will certainly be less than two million, and probably closer to one million than two. The graph I put together (there are many conflicting sources, and I put this together using the most accurate numbers I could find, along with some guesswork and interpolation) shows that the number of Scouts is consistently declining.
I guess that nobody asked the Scouts what their opinion was.
This utter collapse in the number of Scouts is despite the tricks that the national leadership has employed to keep numbers up: they added kindergarteners, the glue eating set, to a new program called Lions. Since the name “Boy Scouts of America” wasn’t clear to them, they decided to add girls to the program and rebrand it as Scouts BSA® where BSA™ doesn’t stand for anything really. It was all an effort to keep the numbers up.
I don’t have high hopes for the girls involved in Scouts BSA™. One local Scouts BSA© leader took girls out camping. One of them snuck a spare cell phone, called a boy with a car, and disappeared with him for a week. Somehow, that didn’t make the local papers.
If you look at the graph, the Boy Scouts had been in trouble before. In the 1980s they realized the program had deviated from what made it popular: being rugged. They reintroduced the old-school methods, and popularity surged.
In 2014, they admitted homosexuals as youth. In 2015, they admitted open homosexuals as leaders. In 2017, girls who think they are boys were allowed to join. Deciding that none of that mattered anymore, in 2019 girls could become Boy Scouts Scouts BSA™ members. At every point, the Left made the point: it’s not enough. Now they want atheists to be able to join.
The Boy Scouts® used to stand for something. Scouts BSA™ stands as just the latest conquest by the Social Justice Warriors. Note that commies throughout history have hated the Scouts. Now that they own it, they can finally kill it.
This is just one story. You can find attack after attack on the Boy Scouts from the Left since the Scouts were founded. Why? Boy Scouts until 2010 was the thing that scared Leftists the most: strong individuals who were responsible for their own actions.
Hollywood© is a similar American story – rooted in the West. About the time that Burnham was killing his way across South Africa and unwittingly starting a youth movement that would transform the 20th century, the movie industry cranked up in California. Why? Well, Edison owned patents, and California was a very long way away from Edison’s lab in New Jersey. The bandits that Burnham knew in California didn’t disappear – they just turned into businessmen.
See? I can do a transition!
Hollywood™ has been a similar success story, though with a few twists and turns. For a large number of years, films coming out of Hollywood© mirrored (in many cases) the Rightist views of the American public. In the height of the Vietnam War protests, John Wayne starred in The Green Berets. Even as late as 2002, Disney® put out Reign of Fire, which was staunchly Right in attitude.
I’m not ashamed to say that I love movies. There are those who say that’s silly, and you’re more than welcome to your opinion. I see them as a way to thrill to bravery and watch as Good defeats Evil. It is a myth-making process that can showcase the very best of what we, as humans, can be.
Duty. Honor. Tradition. Cannons, pistols, and swords. French people being shot. How can you not love this movie? Did I mention French people being shot?
Now, in Current Year, Hollywood™ has managed to mangle several amazing film franchises because they had to inject either gender or identity politics into the films, and not in a light way. The latest Star Wars™ films? Pretty bad, like eye-rollingly bad. It wasn’t the effects, mind you. Those were amazing. It wasn’t the actors – Hollywood© is a consistently ruthless meritocracy of talent.
It was the stories.
Once upon a time, movies were fun. Really fun. Some, of course, still are. But what happened to the funny teen comedy? Well, comedy requires that someone is made fun of. So? Comedy is out.
No, today movies have to be “woke” and parrot the Social Justice Warrior line and teach an important moral. It’s funny when that moral isn’t what China likes, so that Hollywood™ has to change their picture, or change posters to minimize black cast members so Chinese people will go to see the movie.
Hmmm, I wonder if BLM® approved of the poster change? Think they speak Chinese?
Perhaps the reason for the injection of the Leftism is the studio executives wanting to placate their talent or their audience?
It doesn’t matter. It failed horribly.
Sure, it’s a Wilder Bikini Graph®. I was so very not going to do a bikini graph for the Boy Scouts.
Just like in Boy Scouts, now that the Left has fully taken Hollywood®, the rot has set in, and it begins to decay. People don’t want to tune in to see what Leftist fantasy has won this year’s Leftist award.
Neither one of these losses of the Left is a win for the Right. The world was better when we had Boy Scouts. The world was better when we had more movies with better heroes, and comedies that made fun of everyone.
Thankfully, I have a sea of old movies that I can watch. Also, thankfully, something will come to replace the Boy Scouts in time. Politics is downstream of Culture, and Boy Scouts and Hollywood® are part of a culture that no longer exists as it did for nearly 100 years.
That’s okay. We will rebuild. We will create institutions that will renew our culture.
Just like Burnham taught us: we will never give up. We will keep the flame alive, and fight when the odds are stacked against us.
Why?
Because we are so very pretty. We are just too pretty for God to let Western Civilization die.
I was a scout during the 1950s, the whole 9 yards. Camping, hiking, canoeing on the upper Connecticut River for a week, sleeping in an open Adirondack shelter near Mt. Washington in winter, etc. Our leaders and our troop committee were great. All volunteers. Life lessons by the truck load. First aid, survival, swimming and lifesaving, working together, and lots more. Unfortunately like so much more, down the tubes.
Mount washington is in the White mountains in new hampshire, not the adirondacks
Hey grapefruit,
It was a three sided Adirondack shelter at the base of Mount Washington. They are typical in greater New England. We hiked partway up the mountain on Saturday and returned home on Sunday. Read for comprehension dufuss.
For the usual suspects here I should have addressed grapefruit not as dufuss but as moran.
One of my life lessons has been from commenting here on the platform and trying to become more precise in my language. There are sharks here and they will attack. This is no place for wimps.
Cheers and know that I would likely enjoy a pint or two with you.
That works for me, you keep the pint, I’ll take the fifth.
grapefruit for brains applies too but it’s an insult to grapefruit
Like so much in this shitty woke culture here in UK it’s just the same. But we do have a right wing, totalitarian government ready to break the legs of anyone who doesn’t conform or take their government issued medicine – even if we are not sick. So it’s not so good on the ‘right’ either these days.
This is mainly because our ‘leaders’ were not Boy Scouts, but merely softy rich guys just like ‘ole Baden Powell – nothing changes under the Empire’s sun. I was a Cub here in Blighty but failed the exam to become a fully fledged Boy Scout – something to do with a toggle or a woggle – anyway I set up my own gang of misfits and we terrorized our local community for several years until we all grew up and drove cars and girls that followed in our tracks. The 60s were great fun for this game.
I did lots of amazing things during my youth without the dubious benefit of Health & Saaaafety (as Eric would say). And it didn’t hurt a bit. The youth today are so soft they melt at the slightest hint of lacking a ‘safe space’ to air their ‘wokeness’ and join with their Social Warrior mates to cancel all and sundry. It won’t last but we will be left with a failed generation who are unable to look after themselves when they eventually clime out of their parents’ basement – if indeed they ever do. I have a way of handling these apologizes for a real human being: I say: “Boo” and they run away and hide (in their safe space).
God help us.
Over in England they have those poor people over the barrel. It’s not much better in the U.S., but in reality our overlords are terrified over the 450 to 600 million little things that are here and there and everywhere.
>>>God help us.
If God chooses not to help us, then Mr. Darwin certainly will.
Duuno about movies. I sure as hell am not interested in anything that comes out these days. But I’ve been watching the westerns from the 50s and am noticing there was a little SJW shit going on then, as well. 60s was moving into virtue signaling even more. I see pics from the western era, and no, women were not all fixed up in fancy hair dos and such out on a ranch. I can only imagine the stench that people had back in the era.
Woa there – I didn’t used cosmetics ‘back in the era’ but I always showered, every day – yes even in the 60s and always use Coal Tar Soap (Wrights) – still do today 60 years later.
But what I did find, when sailing our unsophisticated little yachts in the English Channel – we weren’t able to shower and anyway it’s so cold most of the time – even a dip is out. So, after a while we got what we call “boaty” but the marvellous thing was, we found that if ‘everybody smells – nobody smells’ until we hit shore and made our way to the yacht club showers in a hurry – most people made a wide berth as we rushed past!
Mom wouldnt let me join the scouts in the late 70’s. She said they were full of queers. So i ended up in lycra stretch pants wrestling around with 21 other boys chasing an oblong pighide and spending the summers at jerry sanduski’s camp.
Nuttin’ gay about that i guess
I suspect by the time all of this is over, everyone will figure out that none of it strayed too far from a shower full of steam and many dropped bars of soap.
Brilliant, enjoyed every word – thank you very much and I learned something too.
The left didn’t kill boy scouts . The faggot infested conservative right did.
“Perkins wrote in a blog post published Monday, “To hear that Donald Trump may be appointing a man who not only led the charge to open the Boy Scouts to gay troop leaders but whose company directly gives to Planned Parenthood is upsetting, at best. FRC knows Tillerson all too well, having worked for years to put the brakes on his reckless agenda for a scouting organization that was already dealing with staggering numbers of sexual abuse cases.”
Tillerson, a former Eagle Scout and a lifelong supporter of the Boy Scouts, was the president of the organization from 2010 to 2012 and served on the executive board in 2013 while successfully advocating to lift the group’s ban on gay scouts that year and, later, on gay troop leaders.”
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/evangelical-leader-tony-perkins-blasts-rex-tillerson-trumps/story?id=44163623
How Tillerson Corrupted The Boy Scouts
http://www.usa-the-republic.com/videos/Brother_Nathanael/videos_2016/How_Tillerson_Corrupted_The_Boy_Scouts.html
Everyone of those bastards including the Orange Man works for someone else. Once people figure out that they need to figure out who that is, this world may have a snowball’s chance in hell.
The BSA like most other organizations in this country are really struggling. I have mapped the changes in membership to the generations identified in The Fourth Turning. It is a very good fit.
I am chair for a girls troop and a boys troop. If you have the right leaders who take them out camping and doing what scouts do, like we do, you get excellent engagement, growth, and membership is a non issue.
We had 5th grade girls learning how to shoot a shotgun this weekend. It was a blast (oh boy, Wilder is rubbing off on me).
I can’t predict what will happen to the BSA, but as the generations turn, I am sure scouting will see a rebirth. Need to get through this period and maintain the core concept. Parents these days are all too often content with their son or daughter pretending to be a warrior on the video game, instead of getting out and actually challenging themselves. It is much easier to sit on the couch than to pack into camp, pitch a tent, cook your meals, and finally get to shoot. But when they do it and hit the target, the personal growth is immeasurable.
Don’t lose hope. Liberty will prevail I the end, but it will not be easy and may come in unexpected, unplanned ways. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
You have the tight attitude.
Kids should be allowed to be kids.
It is the parents that destroyed the Boy Scouts, shoving iphones into the chidren’s hands to entertain them so that they could sail along with-out parenting.
Will anyone really miss our so-called sacred institutions once our Imperial collapse is complete? Eventually, everything that should be learned and cherished will go right back to where it started- the family. Some may even go back to the churches, as long as they don’t have their creepy “youth ministries”. It seems like the Boy Scouts used to have a big problem that until recently, no one talked about. I wonder why?
http://www.alexanderlyon.com/uploads/3/4/0/5/3405660/boy_scouts_of_america__22perversion_files_22_by_name.pdf
john,
this is a good article–
however,i don’t believe that we’ll see a resurrection of either the scouts or hollywood in our lifetimes–
i hope i’m wrong–
It has all been an assault on white men in western civilization.
Thank you for the “link”.
We will rise once again.