eisely

The following is copied from the on line "Guide to Safe Scouting" ____________ Tour Permits If a unit plans a trip within 500 miles of the home base, it is important that the unit obtain a local tour permit. A national tour permit is required for trips in excess of 500 miles from home or outside the continental United States. (See samples of both in the appendix.) Tour permits have become recognized by national parks, military institutions, and other organizations as proof that a unit activity has been well planned and organized and is under capable and qualified leadership. These organizations may require the tour permit for entry. Most short, in-town den trips of a few hours do not require a tour permit; however, it is recommended that dens obtain permission slips from parents. __________ There is more, but I can only have one on line window open at once on this system. In response to Dedicated Dad's point, our unit has some day hikes and bicycle activities originate locally, with parents delivering their sons in their own vehicles to the start point, picking them up afterwards. No organized transportation to and from the event is arranged by the troop. Yet I would definitely consider these events to require a tour permit.

Andrews, A "parents briefing" or meeting does not have to be formal. In fact informality is probably more effective. All I have ever seen done is for some of the experienced adults present who were not directly involved in the troop meeting to make themselves available for discussion. Such discussion is kicked off by a self introduction, and a description of the troop's programs and calendar. This always generates questions and interest. The idea of putting together a boring formal presentation never occurred to me.

The thread on troop and patrol activities raises a question to which I have never gotten a satisfactory answer. When exactly is a tour permit required and when is it not required? In my mind a tour permit is always required for any scout activity, not just camping or hiking, with certain exceptions. The exception as I understand it is for routine troop and patrol meetings. This means that participation in day hikes, service projects, conservation projects, excursions to museums, and similar activities should all be covered by tour permits. Also included are simple training hikes. It blew my mind when I first became involved in scouts as an adult that tour permits were required. I quickly came to see the value of the concept, and I see tour permits as an important risk management tool. Tour permits can easily be seen as a bureaucratic imposition by lawyers on scouting, but that is a simplistic view. I have seen some adults refuse to deal with this for minor events as too much hassle, all of which raises concerns in my mind. Thoughts anyone?

I don't know when the two deep requirement began. Concerning the two deep adult presence, either it didn't exist when I was a scout, or our unit ignored it. We too had patrol outings and explorer post events where the adults present were either one or zero. Upon reflection, that was rather foolish. The only time that we ignore the two deep adult requirement today is for patrol and troop meetings. Multiple youth are at these meetings and no dangerous activities occur, so this is fine. As far as I know the two deep requirement kicks in for anything other than a routine meeting at the troop or patrol level.

The biggest concession was scrapping any federal initiative promoting the use of vouchers. I don't know the details of what Bush had originally proposed, but they gave it up in order to get a bill passed.

Patrol activities also must be in compliance with all BSA safety policies, including two deep qualified adult leadership presence, and tour permits. If a unit enforces the tour permit requirement, the committee will automatically be in the position of being aware of and approving patrol activities.

This bill was signed into law by President Bush today, January 8. Helms' provision is now the law of the land.

Mike, Did you notice that you too are now a senior member? They ought to hand a medal or something.

Mike is right about judging distance. Time is the more meaningful measure in any event. But the "distance" to the next camp site is not as important as information about trail conditions, water supplies in arid areas, animal activity (e.g., bears), and conditions at designated camp sites.

Mike, You're right as usual. After I put up the post I remembered the use of the phrase "jesus freaks," but then I am a Senior Member. Now what was it we were talking about?

PC is also a one way street. There is maximum tolerance for anything that is not main stream or traditional, while those who adhere to traditional religions and beliefs are subtly, and not so subtly, ridiculed. Here in the Bay Area, everything is run on the basis of political correctness, except when it comes to conservatives. There was an incident a few years ago in Silicon Valley. I forget the name of the company. This company was having a big public event, rolling out a product or something, and the event happened to fall on Ash Wednesday. There were some employees present who were wearing ashes on their forehead that day. They were publicly ridiculed by the CEO of the company at that event. So PC is normally a one way street. True diversity would have required the CEO to ignore the ashes, or possibly comment favorably on the ashes.

This business of redistributing weight within a group on a trail is a sensitive matter. There are situations where it is mandatory, in case of injury or altittude sickness. Requiring participation in training hikes with loads both identifies problems and solutions before the main event. This is particularly important for new scouts with new gear. We do these as simple day hikes with some elevation gain and loss. I don't think we have ever had to redistribute loads on a real event just because somebody was having a tough time. Either those who struggled on a training event decided not to go on the main event, or we managed load distribution at the front end of the main event to accomodate differences in capabilities. I have been in situations where loads had to be redistributed because of real problems, and that is when you find out who is a real scout and who is not. To me, these kinds of challenges to a group are when the most important lessons that scouting has to offer are learned.

Responding to P Swigs' post, acknowledging hikers going the other direction is not only polite, but an opportunity to obtain information about conditions ahead of you. This may be less critical in a day hike close to urban areas, but can be extremely valuable in the back country. SLHarter, There is another thread, I think under Open Discussion, entitled "Moving at Different Speeds" that deals at some length with this issue of keeping groups together on the trail. Mike, among others, had some useful suggestions there. You might want to look at it. "Fanning Out" as you call it can lead to a lot of bad consequences unless it is managed.

I would consider any activity sponsered by the unit, or a patrol, properly endorsed by the committee other than a routine meeting or court of honor to qualify. Things you didn't mention: working on someone's eagle project, scouting for food, organized visits to museums, participating in rock climbing at an indoor facility, visits (including overnights) to retired naval vessels such as the Intrepid in New York or the Hornet in Alameida, CA, participating in training, participating in camporees, participating in summer camp, participating in conservation projects. I would have to look again, but I don't think there is any requirement to include service hours with a hike. Service hours can be accumulated in a variety of ways. Of course, incorporating service hours into a hike kills two birds with one stone. (PETA forgive me for this metaphor. No actual birds were ever stoned.) If your unit has computerized its records, the software will probably track such events. We routinely require adult leaders to submit a roster of youth and adult participants, the location, nights camped, and miles hiked. Our advancement chair enters this into the system and the records are valuable for a lot of reasons, beyond just First Class Rank. Since the handbook does not have a space for recording these events, I also recorded in the margins those events for my own sons. If your unit does not maintain good records, these marginal notes become the only record.

One quibble regarding point five. If horses are allowed on the trail you are using, the boys must be taught to do nothing to spook a horse. Staying absolutely quiet and still is the best strategy. Most horses are not a problem, but one never knows.

The size of the pack (80 members) should by itself be a red flag to somebody. In some districts and councils, when a unit gets so large pressures are applied to divide it up into two units. This may not be the ultimate solution, but it might help level the playing field a bit.

This thread, like so many others, has wandered off its subject a great deal. Nevertheless I thought the little essay below from the Wall Street Journal about religious tolerance adds to some of the discussion. This essay is pretty hard on contemporary Islam, in light of 9/11. __________ The Lure of the Rings An alternative to crusades and jihads. BY HENRY GRUNWALD Friday, January 4, 2002 12:01 a.m. EST Osama bin Laden and other Islamic extremists accuse today's West of continuing the Crusades. In a strange echo of this, Bill Clinton, to illustrate some of the West's own misdeeds, recalled that Christian fighters massacred Muslims during the first Crusade (1095-99). And a recent novel about the 12th-century Muslim leader Saladin and his Christian antagonist, Richard the Lionheart, was greeted by some critics as pertinent to the present. A work that deserves to become part of this conversation is "Nathan the Wise," a verse play by the German dramatist and critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing first performed in 1779. There are three leading characters: Saladin, a rich Jerusalem Jew named Nathan and a Christian knight. Saladin, although noble and generous, needs money for his armies and attempts to get it from Nathan by challenging him in an intellectual bet. Nathan is to say which of the three religions of the Book is the true one. Nathan is in a bind: name his own faith and antagonize the Sultan; name Islam and betray his own religion; name Christianity and betray Judaism while also offending the Sultan. Nathan, not called "the Wise" for nothing, escapes the trap by telling the Sultan a story. It's of a wealthy merchant with an opal ring that bestows the power to be loved by both God and man. The merchant has three sons and foolishly promises each of them, in secret, that he will inherit it. The father, feeling death approaching, commissions a jeweler to make two replicas of the ring. They are so fine that he himself cannot tell them from the original, and he gives the three rings to his sons. After the father's death, each son claims to have the true ring and with it the privilege of heading the family. They appeal to a judge to settle the dispute. He declares: My counsel is: Accept the matter wholly as it stands. If each one from his father has his ring, Then let each one believe his ring to be The true one. Possibly the father wished To tolerate no longer in his house The tyranny of just one ring!--And know: That you, all three, he loved; and loved alike; Since two of you he'd not humiliate . . . Let each strive To match the rest in bringing to the fore The magic of the opal in his ring! Assist that power with all humility . . . And with profound submission to God's will! In the end, even the knight, who started out prejudiced against Muslims and Jews, accepts the benign message of the three rings: the universal brotherhood of all men under God. Seen across Holocaust, war and fanaticism of every sort, that enlightened spirit seems almost heartbreakingly dated. But the parable of the three rings is the antithesis of the crusading spirit, and describes what most of the West now believes. This belief can take the form of an intellectually sloppy spirituality that holds all religions and cultures to be equally valid. It can also take a more rigorous form that respects other people's faith while insisting on the distinctness of one's own. Many Christians and Jews insist on the unique truth of their religions, but they do not seek to enforce that truth with fire, sword and Kalashnikovs. That is why commentators who equate Christian and Muslim fundamentalism are wrong and why Muslim leaders who liken today's West to the Crusaders are equally wrong. The Islamic extremists are today's crusaders, seeking to rid Holy Lands of "infidels." Western statesmen almost desperately declare at every opportunity these days that true Islam is a tolerant faith. But even "moderate" Muslim countries today are half-hearted at best in condemning Islamic extremists who not only stamp out Christianity and other religions at home but dream of violently establishing Islam as the one true faith throughout the world. By contrast, Western countries have allowed millions of Muslims to thrive under liberal laws and religious freedom, to build their mosques and live in relative prosperity. Even if they're poor and encounter prejudice, their existence is immensely better and freer than it would be in their own repressive countries. One can only wish that most Muslims might heed the conclusion of the judge's ruling in "Nathan the Wise": And when the magic powers of the stones Reveal themselves in children's children's children: I bid you in a thousand, thousand years, To stand again before this seat. For then A wiser man than I shall sit as judge Upon this bench and speak. But can we really wait "a thousand, thousand years" for that decision? Mr. Grunwald was Time's editor in chief and a U.S. ambassador to Austria. _______________ Not for nothing is the 18th century sometimes referred to as the age of enlightenment.

There are some interesting letters in the current issue of Scouting magazine that are on point on this subject.

Couldn't agree more with Mike. I think one of the reasons more units do not backpack regularly is a lack of interest or self confidence on the part of the adult leadership. This is a problem that should be solvable.

The following lengthy essay is by Andrew Sullivan and talks about John Walker Lindh and Johnny Spann. It should be pointed out that the writer is a rarity, an out of the closet homosexual is a political conservative. I mention this because one of the things that has NOT been reported by the PC press is that John Walker Lindh's father moved out of the family home in 1996 to take up housekeeping with his male lover. That was the year that the young man went astray. Could there possibly be a connection between a screwed up home life and this young man's oddysey into hell? Sullivan, needless to say, disagrees with the BSA policy on membership for "avowed homosexuals." That fact does not limit the usefulness of Sullivan's insights on other issues and his skill as a writer. I don't know if Sullivan was aware of the events in 1996 when he wrote this. The sexual preferences of the father were reported locally at about the time that this piece was written. Anyway, I digress. The point of this essay is not sexual orientation or practices, but the lack of belief. __________ Johnny Walker Red Making Sense of America's Traitor If Hollywood had dreamed it up, the critics would have dismissed it as absurdly far-fetched. Two young Americans; two soldiers. One a hero; the other a traitor. One from the heart of small town conservatism; the other from the most renowned enclave of liberal relativism. One fought for the CIA; the other battled for the Taliban. And then, in one cinematic scene, they meet. In a fort in a wasteland, the two men confronted each other: the two Americas face-to-face; and one of them is killed. Could you make this stuff up? Only Francis Ford Coppola could do it justice. Americans are just beginning to grapple with the extraordinary story of John Walker Lindh from Marin County, California and Johnny Spann from Alabama. Not so long ago, the press was full of analysis of an evenly divided country exposed so starkly in the last election: the vast swath of Republican America in the center of the country and the more liberal and cosmopolitan coasts and big cities. Before the red, white and blue of the terrorism war there was the red and blue of the culture war. The story of Walker and Spann is in some ways a story of both - of the interplay of patriotism and culture, faith and fate. Johnny Spann grew up, according to the New York Times, in a tiny town with four stop-lights in the heart of God-fearing Alabama. No alcohol was sold there; the nearest cinema is 30 miles away. His school teacher remembers Spann's kindness: he gave a shoelace to a friend who had broken his. Spann brought apples for the teacher. He was not a huge guy, but nevertheless a dedicated player on the school football team. Each Sunday, he would pray in the local Church of Christ, one of the most extreme of the fundamentalist Christian churches in America. In his high-school yearbook, when asked to place a quote by his name and picture, Spann chose a passage from the Bible. It was from Proverbs: "He that waketh with wise men shall be wise; but a companion of fools shall be destroyed." Spann went to college at a small school and married a young woman who grew up ten miles from his hometown. Several months before he graduated, he joined the Marine Corps Reserve, finally joining the Marines as soon as he left university - going to the officers' training school in Quantico, Virginia. He rose swiftly through the ranks, becoming a captain in 1996. The New York Times interviewed his fellow Marines about him. "He was a tough guy among tough guys," said one. "He didn't slack off - ever," said another. "You never saw him unkempt. I don't know that I ever saw him drink. I always thought he was raised by a preacher." Before long, Spann was eager to move on and joined the CIA in a paramilitary unit. Friends remembered him as serious, almost pious - seeing the world in the clear, moral hues of his native town. "I believe in the meaning of honor and integrity, constantly pursuing them personally and professionally," Spann wrote in his personal statement in his C.I.A. application, according to the Times. "Although I sometimes fall short, I guide myself by asking, `Is it the right thing to do?' I am an action person that feels personally responsible for making any changes in this world that are in my power. Because if I don't, no one else will." On the other side of the continent, another young man was growing up in the same country but a completely different world. John Walker Lindh grew up in Marin County, California, perhaps the most celebrated region of West Coast alternative lifestyles. The classic tome that etched the region in the American consciousness was a book called "The Serial: A Year In the Life of Marin County." It was published in 1980, just before Walker was born. Think of Islington with Redwood forests. Here's how George Will described the place two decades ago: "Moderns in Marin try to live down their mothers back in Spokane ("I mean, she makes casseroles"), make up bumper-stickers for their Volvos ("Another Glass-blower for Udall"), attach tiny silver coke spoons to their high school charm bracelets, drink at "The Silenced Minority," buy Earth shoes at "The Electric Poppy," and get hair cuts at "Rape of the Locks," where a black militant shampooer harasses the ladies by constantly changing the soul handshake. Marin's affliction is "French bread thumb," a wound suffered by hostesses who drink too much with hors d'oeuvres and then slice themselves instead of the bread. Main exercises include Zen jogging, and dressing for tennis." Get the picture? Walker's parents were Catholic but encouraged him to find his own spiritual pathway. Named after John Lennon, he had to Imagine his own faith. He dabbled in Buddhism, and became enamored of hip-hop. Like many a liberal white American adolescent, black culture seemed an authentic way to rebel against the society that had spawned him. He tried on many guises, chatting on the Internet under a variety of screennames, from John Lindh, John Doe, and Disciple of the Englober, to Hine E Craque, Professor J, Brother Suleyman Al-Mujahid and Mr Mujahid, among others. Sometimes his postings seemed to have internalized an entirely different identity. In 1995, while Johnny Spann was signing up for the Marines, Johnny Walker was pretending to be black: ""When I read those rhymes of yours I got the idea you were a 13-year-old white kid playing smart," he berated one poor rapper. "That whole rhyme was saying all black people should just stop being black and that'll solve all our problems. Our blackness does not make white people hate us, it is their racism that causes the hate." Like many adolescents, Walker found that the "Autobiography of Malcolm X" was written for him. He went from someone who once rejected the strictness of the Catholic Church to someone who seized on the most austere form of Islam for some kind of personal transformation. Soon he was out-doing most American Muslims in his suspicion of Western culture. "It seems quite unusual to have a Muslim convention at a theme park owned by Disney, whose producers are full of kaffir mythology, magic, occultism, sexism, racism and homosexuality. Isn't this the same theme park that sponsored 'gay day' this year?" Read that sentence one more time. It's a weird confluence of leftist victimology and rightist cultural paranoia. It's a useful reminder that ideology is less a straight line than a circle. At some point the extremes of left and right meet. Walker found that place and united the liberal loathing of the West with the conservative loathing of modern permissivism. Islam was where the extremes touched. Reading about Walker's story, it seems at times like some kind of dark version of Absolutely Fabulous. His hyper-liberal parents wanted nothing more than that their son rebel, seek his own way, find his own path. Walker faced the dilemma of every rebellious child of liberal parents: how do you really rebel? AbFab's Saffy finds a kind of rebellion in conformity. Walker did the same, attracted by the stern strictures of Islam, but also finding its exoticism almost approved of in his cultural milieu. Radical Islam squared his adolescent circle. No-one judged. No-one told him that his subsequent beliefs in the subordination of women, the execution of homosexuals, the mass murder of innocents in a Jihad were actually "wrong." In liberal enclaves in California, there is no actual right and wrong. There is only judgment (abhorrent) and tolerance (admirable). Even now, when Walker has supported an army that killed thousands of innocents, some Californians are reluctant to "judge." "As a friend and as a person who cares for Suleyman, I hope he can come back to his friends and family. Whether he has done something wrong is not for me to say," an attendant at Walker's old mosque said last week, using Walker's adopted Muslim name. "Really, God determines. God will judge a person's actions in the hereafter." Encouraged by his doting parents, Walker subsequently dropped out of school, and traveled abroad to the Yemen, because the dialect there is apparently closest to the original language of the Koran. Walker stayed apart from others, devoting himself almost manically to learning every word of the Koran, but growing increasingly uncomfortable with the heat and dust. After a trip back home in 1999 to see his mother, he returned and eventually found his way to Afghanistan. Recruited into the holy war that was a logical extension of his extreme religious fervor, Walker had slowly morphed into something that Norman Mailer described many years ago: he became a White Negro. The anti-Western self-hatred of the cultural far left flipped the young man's identity inside out. The doubts and choices of a permissive environment were resolved by the absolute certainty of a medieval faith in its most stringent form. Johnny Spann had never lacked such certainty, he had grown up with it, He felt it in his bones. Just before he left for Afghanistan, he had emailed his parents the following message: "What everyone needs to understand is these fellows hate you. They hate you because you are an American. Support your government and your military, especially when the bodies start coming home." Like Walker, he also ended up thousands of miles from home, but he was in the service of his own country, not an alien fanaticism. Spann meanwhile had morphed slightly out of the rock-ribbed identity of his early life. He was divorced from his first wife, with whom he had had two children. His new wife had just given birth to his third child. It's unclear exactly what Spann had been doing in the war up until his last moments. But on a fateful day, he was in a fort near Mazar e Sharif, interrogating Taliban prisoners. In an amazing turn of events, Spann's final actions were actually videotaped. On the ground in front of him were several prisoners of war, disheveled beyond belief, filthy, malnourished, and silent. One of these prisoners turned out to be Walker. Spann squatted down to face his fellow countryman: "Who brought you here? Wake up! Who brought you here to Afghanistan? How did you get here?" No reply comes. Walker had no epiphany after American troops and Northern Alliance forces had routed the Taliban in Northern Afghanistan. He seemed to regret nothing, to remain adamantly devoted to his new cause and new loyalty. Spann and his CIA colleague, "Dave," then talked loudly in front of Walker to try and goad him into some kind of response. "The problem is," Dave said, "he needs to decide if he wants to live or die ... We're just going to leave him, and he's going to f-king sit in prison the rest of his f-king short life. It's his decision, man." Spann tried another tack. "There were several hundred Muslims killed in the bombing in New York City. Is that what the Quran teaches? I don't think so. Are you going to talk to us?" Walker sat mute. What happened next is unclear. "Someone either pulled a knife or threw a grenade at the guards or got their guns, and started shooting," Walker told Newsweek last week. "As soon as I heard the shooting and screaming, I jumped up and ran about one or two meters, and was shot in the leg." Spann wasn't so lucky. Apparently, a Taliban soldier with explosives strapped to his chest ran up to Spann, hugged him and detonated. Spann became the first American casualty at the hands of the enemy in the entire war. He was buried in Arlington cemetery, a place he had once spent many hours walking in, surrounded by military heroes of decades and centuries past. The picture of his young widow on the front page of the New York Times last week was unforgettable. She is cradling their infant and staring at the coffin, held aloft by marines, draped in Old Glory. Her eyes bespeak the deepest grief but also an almost incandescent anger. She is not alone. At some level, the tale of these two Americans is simply an anomaly. Comparatively few soldiers have seen the kind of direct combat that Spann grappled with. So far, Walker is the only active traitor in Taliban ranks that we know of. In some respects, their meeting was simply a spectacular coincidence. But it is so laden with cultural and political significance, it is hard to avoid considering its broader meaning. If you had wanted to construct the most egregious stereotypes of the conservative, God-fearing military hero and the liberal hippy traitor, it would be hard to beat Spann and Walker. Their backgrounds evoke visceral responses among Americans, suggestive of a culture war that might have happened if this war had gone badly or never been aggressively prosecuted in the first place. Was this an epic meeting of red and blue America? Some have already leaped to that conclusion. The writer Shelby Steele wrote eloquently in the Wall Street Journal last week that "Cultural liberalism serves up American self-hate to the young as idealism. And this idealism, along with the myth of the victim-sage, was the context of Walker's young life. It's too much to say that treason is a rite of passage in this context. But that is exactly how it turned out for Walker. In radical Islam he found both the victim's authority and the hatred of America that had been held out to him as marks of authenticity. He liked what he found. And when he turned on his country to be secure in his new faith, he followed a logic that was a part of his country's culture." This is a brutal but powerful judgment. What Steele argues is that the cultural liberalism of some parts of America was a necessary condition for Walker's treachery. It may not have been sufficient; it certainly cannot explain everything. But Walker's own sad young life is an obvious testimony to how lost some young souls can get in a culture where nothing is deemed sacred, nothing right, nothing wrong, and everything equally true. The left sees otherwise. If this culture spawns treason, they ask, where are the other traitors? Do we blame Alger Hiss's upper class WASP background for his treason during the Cold War? Do we infer that being Jewish had something to do with the disloyalty of the Rosenbergs? Was Ezra Pound's treason a function of his upbringing in Idaho? Just because so many British traitors turned out to be gay, does that mean that homosexuality itself is inherently prone to disloyalty and betrayal? These points surely have merit. It's far too easy to extrapolate wildly from someone's background to damn everyone around him or her by association. It's also true that Marin County isn't quite the liberal stereotype of lore. Go there today and the place is festooned with flags, like many another American suburb. "He gave us up, he gave up on his country," said a Marin County gourmet grocer to the Las Vegas Sun last week. The man wanted Walker exiled. "I think the young man's pretty much doomed. There's no way his parents could save him from this." Sixty percent of respondents on the website of the San Francisco Chronicle believed Walker should be executed. And that's the mood in San Francisco - not Mississippi. The Washington Post's Richard Cohen, perhaps sensing a devastating indictment of a liberalism he is sometimes in sympathy with, appealed to other boomer parents: "Behind the beard and the filth, almost any parent recognizes John Walker. He is the kid who is possible, not probable, who could be yours but probably is someone else's, who would be loved but not liked or understood. He is not the predictable consequence of relativism, liberalism and balmy weather but an exception to almost any rule you can think of -- except, of course, the tendency to always fix blame no matter what." One Marin County writer made a similar point: "I have no idea if Northern California parents are more lenient. All of the people I'm close to are liberal Democrats, and most of them have fantastic children. But some of their kids have ended up in the street or as suicides. I bet that statistically hard- core right-wing Christians have about the same proportion of happy and well-adjusted children as us aging progressives." And indeed, murder rates are higher in the Bible belt. And bad apples come from every family. One esteemed Texas family once had a highly volatile youngster who drank a lot, crashed cars and wasted his life away. He's now president of the United States, a man whose own experience perhaps led him to compassionately describe Walker as a "poor fellow." And yet at the same time, it's still not surprising that a man of Walker's odd life-history came from the relativist, liberal enclaves of the American upper middle class. In the last week, his father still couldn't bring himself to condemn the actions of his son - a man complicit in an army that kills thousands of non-combatant innocents. "I don't think John was doing anything wrong," he told CBS's "The Early Show." To ABC's "Good Morning America" he said, "We want to give him a big hug and then a little kick in the butt for not telling us what he was up to." Not telling us what he was up to? If his father cannot even have an inkling of a moral compass after this event, what chance did his son have growing up? The truth is, parts of the American left have long lost faith in America. They don't believe in her; or they fashion their patriotism in such contravention of American history, traditions and ideals that it is scarcely recognizable as patriotism to many of their fellow Americans. For these people, the whole notion of "treason" is anathema, because its opposite - an undying loyalty to country - is so suspect. "I strongly believe in this sort of citizen-of-the-world notion," a Marin resident told the press last week, in defense of Walker's upbringing. The liberal elites who lost their nerve for good during the Vietnam War are too old to regain it now. The soft-left spin now is that these people don't really exist - that they are a figment of the paranoid Right's imagination. But of course they exist. You only have to hang among the faculty at a major American university and you will find before too long a visceral disdain for traditional American values, a skepticism of the very notion of freedom, a deconstructed ideology that, confronted with evil or an enemy, can only see nuance and certainly can never find the will to fight. This decadence flared briefly in the wake of September 11. If the war had gone badly, it would be gaining strength right now. And these people and their apologists will find in Walker such a monumental embarrassment that they will do everything they can to make sure his story is forgotten, ignored or trivialized. But it won't be. Much of the country knows instinctively the kind of mindset that makes a John Walker possible. Besides, the left is in a very difficult position arguing that it is wrong to blame an entire subculture for the actions of a tiny few. For years now, they have used the example of Timothy McVeigh to indict any anti-government Republican from the heartland. Yes, guilt by association is wrong and unfair. But context tells you something. And what the story of John Walker and John Spann tells us is that for all the disdain and condescension that is often leveled at small town conservative America, it's the men and women from those places who often make it possible for the rest of us to live in peace and security. Americans won't press the point now. The argument is far too divisive and rancorous to gain traction in the middle of a war. But my guess is that we are witnessing a deep and profound cultural shift in the United States. The post-Vietnam liberalism that swept through an entire generation, the cultural liberalism that despised Nixon and sustained Clinton, is in a profound and perhaps irreversible retreat. And one reason is that in the story of John Spann and John Walker, an obvious truth was revealed. We all need a sense of right and wrong - from childhood onwards. And patriotism, that atavistic, powerful, but beleaguered sentiment, is a function neither of weak minds nor feeble prejudice. Sometimes, it is a surpassing virtue, and its opposite a vain and callow evil. Sunday Times of London, December 17, 2001

Sctmom touches on another issue that can be extremely important. That is the conflicting demands on boys' time when those boys are involved in sports. If one has a son who is active in sports, the unit needs to be supportive of that. Ironically some of the strongest troops I have seen do not tolerate high absenteeism for sports or other activities. Such units demand a high degree of commitment to scouting to the virtual exclusion of other interests. While that policy makes for a very strong troop program, it has the effect of excluding some boys from scouting, at least in that troop. To repeat, if your boy is involved in sports, you need to ask directly what the troop attitude is towards this.

Hey OGE, Fortunately PC is not a problem for scouting generally. I view scouting as a partial solution to PC. Where political correctness shows up and can be very oppressive is in the schools today at all levels, in the media, and even at places of work. Scouting is very inclusive and we don't have to worry about this too much. A current example: LDS units attending camporee usually bug out at the end of Saturday to be back home to attend services on Sunday. Schedules are modified where necessary to accomodate this. An old example: When I was working on camp staff as a teen ager one of the most interesting troops to come through was a troop operating out of the Missouri State School for the Deaf at Fulton Missouri. This was back in the 50's. One of the scouts in that troop also had a major physical deformity and had only one useful hand. He and a buddy completed canoeing merit badge. He was not evaluated on form, but performance. He was able to figure out ways to meet the requirements that weren't very graceful, but they worked and we signed him off. Dealing with this troop was an interesting experience for everybody. None of us on staff knew sign language, and the boys in the unit took on additional burdens to make sure that boys who could read lips sufficiently were always around to communicate to their less able bretheren. We all had to learn to speak more clearly and slowly and face the interpreter. These guys didn't know how to sing, but that didn't stop the rest of us from singing, and they were fully into the spirit of having fun and learning from scouting.

Two observations about "we've always done things that way...." 1. This is not an acceptable excuse for not considering doing something different. Just not acceptable. 2. There are usually good reasons why "we've always done things that way..." Before rejecting an old way of doing things just because it is old, the proponents of the old way at least deserve the courtesy of being heard. Old ways of doing things were seldom arrived at accidentally. The real questions are whether the original reasons for doing things the old way still apply, and even where those reason might still apply might a new way still be better? When it comes to training I learn more from the the questions asked by the newbies than I do from the answers from the old hands. The questions often reflect a new way of looking at things, not just ignorance of scouting traditions, policies, methods, etc. One of the benefits of going through training is that it can simply be fun. It is a great way to meet adults with similar concerns and interests. We all learn from each other all the time.

The primary responsibility for managing, and restraining if necessary, these kinds of patrol/den fund raising activities rests with the unit committee. I have made this point, and others have also made this point. ScouterPaul responded earlier that there was an original purpose behind this endeavor that was presumably legitimate. What will happen next is anybody's guess. Perhaps ScouterPaul has more information for us on this. I think the official policy of endorsing fund raising only at the unit level is designed to force unit committee awareness of what is going on, and ensuring that fund raising is thought through ahead of time. I don't think the policy is intended to prevent fund raising for activities below the unit level that the committee has agreed to. A unit committee, by reviewing and accepting a proposal, and filing the proper paperwork, effectively makes it a recognized unit actitivity as KoreaScouter points out. This is not something that deserves a DE's attention, unless the committee is completely dysfunctional. At most unit commissioner intervention might be warranted. If there are deeper problems of uneven programs among the dens, or jealousy among den leaders, then this is a symptom of a deeper problem. The den leader in question may have acted hastily, but I hate to kill a volunteer's enthusiasm over something like this. There has to be a better way of resolving this kind of situation than ringing up the DE.

Sound advice from KoreaScouter.