DWise1_AOL

I have a copy of the 1911 Handbook (an original, not a reprint). Pg 10 lists the twelve points as an "abbreviated form of the Scout Law". It is this form to which the scouts "are to commit to memory". Pg 15 Provides the laws "which relate to the BSA, are the latest and most up to date". 11. A scout is clean. He keeps clean in body and thought, stands for clean speech, clean sport, clean habits, and travels with a clean crowd. There you go. It was with BSA pretty much from the beginning if not actually from the beginning. It was also not with Lord Baden-Powell's original Scout Law, so it is a USA addition (meaning the United States of America with its capitol in the District of Columbia and not the other four "United States" in America). I think the point still remains that BSA had interpreted far more into the point of the Law than they should have. And my personal opinion that we should retain that point of the Law, properly interpreted. Congrats on owning an original 1911 Handbook. Very valuable. I had also learned a lot from my father's 1944 Bluejacket's Manual which I still own and treasure. You must have had an ancestor who was active in Scouting back then.

This is perhaps too close to the ground to be representative. After the death of my son and my wife's self-imposed alienation, I found solace in the dance classes that we had been pursuing as a couple. Such that group classes are still my main form of a social life. In one class is a homosexual whom I am very proud to call my friend. In listening to his conversations with our teacher (female) , there is a sizable homosexual population within the LDS. My ballroom instructor, very obviously gay, is also Mormon. If the Mormon Church wants to deal with homosexuality, then it needs to do so on its own. BSA need not be involved.

packsaddle: Sorry about that. She means a lot to me. KDD, a friend in my two-step class tonight offered a real-world case. She's an office manager who had lost her long-time job over a year ago when the viable company she worked for closed down because the banks refused them a business loan. For more than a year she tried to find work but, being too old and unable to accept a ridiculously low salary she had no luck. During the past year, she has used up almost all of her savings just to be able to survive. Her boyfriend has an advanced degree in mathematics with practical engineering experience. He has also been out of work for a long time, being too old and "too qualified." At least he had planned ahead for retirement (he did the math, don'cha know?) and considers himself as having retired early. Tonight, she referenced a study that says that almost everybody over a certain age (mid-50's, I think) who lost their job will never be able to get another job. She beat that statistic, having gotten a job a few months ago. She replaced a much younger worker who got fired for being 100%. They just simply could not afford to keep that 100%-er. She showed up all the time and did everything that she was told to do. And nothing more than that. She would perform every task she was told to perform and then when she was done with that she would sit there and check her on-line status. She gave 100% and clearly that was not enough. She lacked initiative. My friend gives 110%. She shows initiative. When she has completed a task, she looks for what needs to be done and then she does it. That is what 110% is about. That is why it is so important. Here is another example. I used to be married. I am a computer professional (software engineer) and my wife was a non-computer person. In fact, the main thing that motivated her to learn more was when her equally non-tech mother started doing email, though she really came up to speed during the year that she worked on her master's in education. Her first exposure to a word processor was when I installed a DOS version of WordPerfect at home. She needed to use it for school, but she refused to learn it. We both had learned touch-typing in school and on a typewriter you had to format as you went; while I had broken free of that paradigm, she was still locked into it which caused problems. Since she refused to learn anything about using the computer, her "solution" was for me to stand over her shoulder and tell her every key combination to press. That was unacceptable, so I suggested that she type everything in and I could then come back and format it, but she refused that idea because she was still trapped within the typewriter paradigm of having to format your document as you type it. It did not end well. When I later installed a Windows version of Word and didn't tell anybody about it, the very next day I came home from work and found our older son (maybe about 10 years old) using it. So she started paying him by the page to do her word processing for her. Clever little genius that he was, he used the largest font possible in order to run up the number of pages. They straightened all that out between each other, but with her master's degree she learned to do the work herself. The point to all that is my ex-wife's attitude at that time. She didn't want to take any initiative to actually learn what to do, but rather she wanted me to stand over her shoulder to tell her everything to do. Does that sound at all familiar? Doesn't that sound like the mind-set of a 100%-er? "Tell me everything to do. Stand over my shoulder and tell me every move to make." That is what it is like to have a 100%-er work for you. You have to organize and present and supervise every single task for your subordinates. So while you are busy micro-managing every single thing that all your subordinates do, when are you ever able to do your own job? I have been trained in Marxism. We were trained in Marxism by the United States Air Force in our first resident NCO leadership school. A central idea in Marxism was that it was the workers who created the actual production while the managers were parasites feeding off of the workers' production. But what that ignores is that it is the work of the managers that enables the workers to do their work. Of course, I benefited from having worked for my father, a general contractor and Seabee Chief Petty Officer (unfortunately, he had died a year before I made chief myself). When I started working for him, his first imperative was to let me know that he had done everything that he was telling me to do and that he was willing and able to still do it himself if necessary. The main point being that by having me do the dirty work, that freed him to do the job of securing the work for us to do and of providing everything that I needed to do the job that I was doing. Management is not a pack of parasites feeding off the sweat of the workers. Management is what provides the work for the workers and enables them to to that work. So then, management has a lot more important things to do than to stand over every worker and micro-manage them. Any 100%-er who keeps them from doing their job is a liability. Any less-than-100%-er, such as a 70%-er, is a far greater liability. What company can afford to carry such a liability? We all need to be 110%-ers just to survive. Unless our father or father-in-law runs the company.

KBB, ever see Steve Martin's movie, "L.A. Story"? Loved that movie! He was a TV weatherman. The weather reports for Los Angeles were always the same, so he took a day off and just reran an old "sonny" forecast when in reality a major storm hit that sank the station owner's boat. KBB, have you ever had to troubleshoot a PC? You look at the symptoms and you try to figure out what's wrong. If you're right, then you're a hero, but if you're wrong then what the ?, we just have to replace a computer. Have you ever troubleshot a person? You look at the symptoms and you try to figure out what's wrong. If you're right, then you're a hero, but if you're wrong then what the ?, you just killed somebody. Same thing, isn't that? Kill a computer, kill a person. And yet, somehow it seems to feel kind of different, wouldn't you agree? I remember one commedian/commedienne who was talking about terminal diseases. That person was wanting to see what his physician's actual grades were in his own personal condition. OK, you did OK overall, but how especially did you do with prostate cancer? Or with breast cancer (a very particular concern of mine since a very dear friend of mine has it)? My very dear friend has breast cancer, dammit! I do not want her care to go to some fracking idiot who only got a 70% grade on breast cancer! I want her to be treated by the people who got over 100%!!!! [remark removed by moderator because of 'F' word] In the real world, 100% does not cut it one least bit!

Yes, the mediocre students can indeed become exceptional late-bloomers[/i]. Everybody has the potential to exceed his/her past performance. But what about now? Isn't that what we are talking about, now? The unexceptional can become President of the United States with the right daddy and party backing? Yeah, OK, so what? You don't have a rich and powerful daddy with a legacy? You just want to keep your job? If you just want to keep your job, then 70% is not enough, but then it never has been enough. If you just want to keep your job, then 100% is not enough. It used to be enough, but not more. Here is the military model from which we derive the teaching of "110%". A fundamental value that we inculcate from the beginning in basic training is submission to the standards. There are minimal standards that we must all maintain at all times. Maintaining those minimal standards is called "discipline". While the popular misconception is that one's sergeant or petty officer is constantly standing over you and yelling at you to do everything, that is false. OK, at first they have to stand over you and tell you everything you need to do, but that phase is quickly passed, or else you will be processed out of the service. The entire purpose of discipline is that you will internalize all the rules and doing the required things becomes an integral part of you; more than 35 years later, I still fold my underwear and t-shirts to a 6-inch width. The point is that I do not need anybody to be standing over my shoulder yelling at me to fold my underwear that way. OK, so we have a force of "robots" all doing everything the specified way. But that is not what's actually happening. We all know the standards and we work to meet those standards. But the day-to-day is not what is expected to happen. Situations arise for which there does not yet exist any protocol. Every year, everybody's "eval" (though for officers it's a fitrep, a "fitness report") comes due. A running "joke" is to refer to somebody's unexpected action as an "initiative bullet", an annotation on their eval/fitrep of some kind of initiative that they had taken, an entry that will result in his being considered for becoming a chief petty officer. Even though we require adherence to the standards, we still depend on the ones who take the initiative. In the military, those who maintain 100% are only maintaining the standard, doing the minimal that is required of them. Those are our administrators, our paper-pushers. In the military, those who push ahead to put in 110% will become our leaders.

OK, so what is your avatar's origin? I know that it is not the Resistance ("Star Wars") and certainly is not the symbol of the Twelve Colonies of Kobold. Care to enlighten us?

moosetracker, could you please refer us back to the posting you are responding to? I find this site particularly difficult to navigate, so any trail signs you could leave would help immensely. I have suffered the great misfortune of having had a friend talk me into taking her Baptist mega-church's DivorceCare program (though her ulterior motive was to not take a competing program on the same night as the Single Ministry's dance classes since the ratio of men to women in those classes was typically 50:150 and also since I was one of the few men who had any clue how to dance -- apparently a rare and valuable commodity). I would also point out that California divorce laws is "divorce on demand" for which no actual reason ever needs to ever be given, so I don't even have a reason for being divorced. In the world-view that you see expressed in that unidentifed link, do they differentiate between those who initiate divorce and those who have divorce forced upon them? The reason for this question is, since the creators of that link apparently view divorce as some kind of moral failing, do they even bother to draw any kind of distinction between who initiate a divorce and those who have divorce forced upon them? Because the law in states with "divorce upon demand" does indeed create an entire population of those upon whom divorce has been forced. To begin with, that mega-church had policies that everybody's primary responsibility while going through a divorce is to try to reconcile with your estranged spouse. That was also the primary concern of DivorceCare. While that may make sense within Baptist theology (and I would personally, as an atheist, agree that divorce should be avoided and that reconciliation should be attempted, barring cases of abuse, especially physical abuse), there is also the fact that some divorce filings are legitimate attempts to escape abuse (a dance teacher I assist had suffered through years of physical abuse and fearing for her own safety and for the safety of her children). Again, I would ask what your link says about those cases. Also, I must point out that a number of postings on-line that I have read (a very small number compared to what must actually exist) have been from victims of abuse who were so outraged by DivorceCare's insistence that they reconcile with their abusive spouse they then decided to become Divorced from God (for which there was a documentary, but its website seems to have gone away). Anyway, the result of DivorceCare on me, an atheist, was this. In video tape after video tape, they repeatedly emphasized that we ourselves can never ever possibly have any hope of ever recovering from divorce through our own powers and efforts. Only Jesus could ever possibly enable us to recover from divorce. that told me that, according to them, only a Christian could ever hope to recover from a divorce. So then according to the training that I was receiving, I personally could never ever recover from divorce. OK, that's a complete waste! But long after that, I read something even worse. I read that the US Army chaplaincy had decided to require every single soldier going through a divorce to also go through the very same DivorceCare program I had gone through. DivorceCare is only appropriate for a narrow population. To require it for all is inexcusable. But we haven't examined the funny part yet. There is a stock and standard joke about Baptists and dancing: "Why do Baptists condemn sex while standing? Because they fear that it could result in dancing." That local Baptist-like mega-church I mentioned (but will not name) has a single ministry of about 15,000 people. What would be the healthiest kind of social event for singles to meet singles? A dance. But what do Baptists think about dancing? The mind shudders. The singles ministry of that mega-church had to function kind of outside the bounds of the top pastors. My friend had to go up before the mega-church's top leaders in defense of the singles' dance classes and events and very nearly was excommunicated (or the Baptist equivalent) over it. There was a time when the church sponsored country dances, but the top pastors exacted very strict restrictions. Only line dances were allowed. After all, if partner dancing were to be allowed, how could they possibly control it to the point where they could ensure that married individuals didn't dance with unmarried individuals? In reality, the organizers of that dance just went ahead and allowed partner dancing. Nothing at all collapsed as a result. Not so interestingly, some people look at the world as black and white. While the world is in reality gray. Their boundaries are not set in black and white, but rather they need to define the degrees of gray.

The most recent copy of The Boy Scout Handbook that I have is the 10th edition, 1990. Pages 553-561 present and discuss the Scout Law. As I recall, the first part of each section quotes from official BSA Rules and Regulations or Bylaws, whichever is the actual source (sorry, I haven't read those since the 1990's, though the last time was after BSA had banned access to them, since I had bought copies when they were still sold in the Scout Shop). On page 561: The discussion that follows mentions physical dirt, which is unavoidable but which can be washed off, and "moral dirt" (my own term for it which is not used within the text) which cannot be so easily washed off: That is what BSA taught, though yet again that is not what BSA practiced, including BSA's targeted insults to those whom it wished to exclude. Just as we have seen in this topic, BSA added extraneous interpretations to this point of the Law. It is a binding principle for all BSA leaders that we are not to add nor subtract from the actual requirements, and yet that is what BSA was doing (and still is). BSA re-interpretation that point of the Law to mean that homosexuality is not "clean" and hence they justified expelling gay members for being unable to follow Scout Law. That is adding to the requirements for membership. And I suspect that it is that re-interpretation of that point of the Law, that addition to the Law, that prompted the opening post (OP) of this topic. Also note that CLEAN, like REVERENT, are themselves additions to the original Law. I own a reprint of BSA's first Handbook for Boys, but it's packed away and I cannot get to it right now. However, as I recall, those additional points to Scout Law already existed in BSA's version of Scouting and hence have been part of BSA-style Scouting from the beginning. All I'm stating here is that any comparison between UK Scouting and BSA Scouting needs to keep that history in mind. My opinion is that this point of the Law should be retained, but only so long as its proper interpretation is observed and it's not used for BSA political purposes. The same as with REVERENT, which does not require the exclusion of atheists and which does explicitly exclude the outright bigotry that we see so many Scouters express.

A commendable approach, Basementdweller. Run the program within the troop as it should be run and act as a buffer between the troop and BSA. Continue to keep BSA as far away from your unit and from your people as is possible.

Yes, packsaddle, I agree with you that that is what we teach students in school. And it is the first in the list of "The Wrong Lessons: Things NOT to Learn in School": And if you want to present George W. Bush as an example, then I'm right with you on that one!

No, absolutely not! BSA has proposed outside of its actual rules, regulations, bylaws, etc, the existence of a rule that requires "belief in a Supreme Being". Such a rule has so far not been determined to actually exist. For that matter, in court in the case of Randall v. Orange County Council the judge did directly order BSA Orange County Council to produce such a rule and said Council Exec, Kent Gibbs, did directly inform the judge that no such rule in fact actually exists. Boy Scouts America, Inc, admitted in court that there is no such rule requiring "belief in a Supreme Being." Do you have any problem with that? The point of this entire thread is that as of the 1990's, there was in deed no BSA rule that actually required "belief in a Supreme Being". There was no such actual rule in the mid-1980's during the Paul Trout debacle and, in deed, BSA very explicitly stated that any "belief in a Supreme Being" "rule" was a complete "mistake". There was still no such rule in the early 1990's when Chief Scout Exec Ben Love, the exact same CSE who had reassured everybody during the Paul Trout debacle, was again enforcing the "belief in a Supreme Being" "rule" that in the Paul Trout debacle he himself had labelled a "mistake". My question in this entire thread from the very start was whether anything had changed since the late 1990's. Going into the late 1990'a, any "belief in a Supreme Being" rule in BSA did not exist. I am asking whether any official rule has been enacted since then. So far, all indications are completely negative. That is what I have been asking all along: What has officially changed since the late 1990's?

True enough, but the point does remain.

This last election, we had a Mormon running for President. I very personally observed and personally experienced what happens when Mormons take over an institution, such as BSA, Inc. For backing, I refer to Penn and Teller's ZBullshit! episode which cited the Mormon take-over of BSA in the 1980's. I did not vote for Romney, but it was not because he is a Mormon. Really, there were so very many problems with voting him, Mormonism was the least of my concerns. But still, having seen what an absolutely mess they have made of BSA, how could we ever trust them with the US government?

Yeah, well, LDS is kind of a ... OK , not really a mixed bag. A lot of Mormons are personally decent folk. But the entire community/church/political/court-room thing can get rather weird. And through a gay friend or two I've been picking up on some extra Mormon weirdness with regards to homosexuality within the community, but I'm not qualified to speak on that except to say that there is something going on there. For normal district-level stuff, there can be a lot of frustration felt by non-Mormons. There are district-level Camporalls planned and executed, but all the Mormon units pull out on Saturday night in order to be in church Sunday morning, thus also pulling out of the Sunday activities. Basically, the Mormons and the non-Mormons end up running their own separate and practically independent programs. Within any group/organization, you want to be able to work with everybody, but at the same time the Mormons keep themselves separate from the rest. Another element is the political/judicial. The Mormon Church has selected Boy Scouts, Inc, as its male youth program. As such, every Mormon boy is required to participate in BSA Scouting. Whether a boy actually participates or not, the Mormon Church enrolls him in BSA's Scouting programs up until he reaches the age of 18. Regardless. But wait, we haven't gotten to the weird part yet. The Mormon Church programs every single boy to "Eagle out" by age 14. Every Mormon boy's actual involvement with Scouting is programmed to end at age 14, and yet the Mormon Church continues to enroll and pay for every single Mormon male until he reaches the age of 18. So what are those boys doing between 14 and 18? Mormon sports programs! Now for the judicial angle. In the religious discrimination lawsuits of the early 1990's, a recurring and staple position of the BSA lawyers arguing in the various courts was that BSA really didn't want to discriminate against these other religious groups (eg, atheists), but they were being extorted by the Mormon Church. If BSA were to allow even a single atheist to join Scouting, then the Mormon Church would withdraw all its support, which would be economically devastating to BSA, Inc. Of course, the BSA lawyers were never known to ever be consistent as they also argued that BSA was a secret religious organization and had been from the start, BSA had never ever been a secret religious organization even from the start, etc. Basically, whatever outright lie the BSA lawyers could tell whenever it suited them. So basically, the Mormon units seem to be running their own program separate from everybody else, which causes friction with non-Mormons. A Mormon afterthought, if I may. Back circa 1986, a male co-worker had married a Mormon woman and had hence married into the church. One day he came in to work and was complaining loudly and bitterly of what had just been done to him. He had just been drafted as Cubmaster. As he loudly proclaimed to everybody at work, "I have two daughters! I have no sons!". Basically, the Church tells you what your job will be and that is it. Here is the non-Mormons' take on that. Yes, all the positions do get filled, but what kind of service is rendered? Mormon "volunteers" render as much service as they are required to render, and no more. Think of the volunteer's line, "What is the least that I can do? And I do mean the very least." Mormon "volunteers" do the absolute minimum that is required of them and not one bit more (obvious individual exceptions duly noted). Non-Mormon volunteers are not required to fill a position and so they normally will put out that 110% and more (I will digress on that later) and will do so cheerfully instead of begrudgingly. In my years at District Roundtable representing my sons' troop, that dichotomy between Church-required service and actual service came up again and again. There is a definite difference between meeting a required commitment, which would be the Mormon model, and actually volunteering our time, which would be the non-Mormon model. "110%". When I was a kid, I couldn't understand that, since there could not possibly be more than 100% of anything. As a retired Chief Petty Officer with 35 years of service, I understand it fully. When you give 100%, what really are you giving? You do everything that is required of you.That is what giving 100% is, doing everything that is required of you. In school, do you know what grade that would give you? A "C". So another word for "100%" would be "mediocre." How then can you excel? By giving more than is required of you. By giving more than 100% Like giving 110%. That is the meaning of "giving 110%". And that is what I taught my Webelos. Hu Rah!

I am not trying to arbitrate truth, but truth must be served! You side yourself against seek truth. That is what your religion requires of you, so I cannot speak against that. But my own religion requires me to seek out the truth, so of necessity my posts must seek out the truth while your own posts must avoid the truth. OK, that is how it is, even though it seems evil to me. But I have to ask you just what you mean by this: "The Wise One (@AOL.com) arbitrates ... grammar for forum posters." Just what the frak are you talking about there? And I only call liars those who deliberately tell lies. Like Eagledad. And that has absolutely nothing to do with forum software, but rather with Eagledad's deliberate decision to deliberately lie. And that is for him to resolve, not for you and your irrevelant platitudes.