UnScouting: An Alternative to the Boy Scouts

After years of prohibiting openly gay members, the Boy Scouts of America has changed its policy and will now accept openly gay scouts. I always respected the organization’s right to freely associate, and am glad to see that such a decision was not forced upon them by government. However, if I had a son, I wouldn’t encourage him to join the Boy Scouts. This has nothing to do with the recent decision regarding gay membership.

Michael S. Alford, author of Swindled, wrote a piece for LRC a few months back that painted the Boy Scouts in quite an unattractive light. He explained that for a brief time he and the other leaders were able to teach their scouts what interested them. They rewrote the book, so to speak, choosing to focus on what interested them. They did their own fundraising and included other family members in the activities.

Then corporate found out.

They weren’t happy with the way Alford and the others had tailored the program. It didn’t fit their mold, it wasn’t focused on fundraising. So the upper management took a greater role, and the result was, according to Alford, “an environment where risk-taking was a frightful prospect, and instead it was enough to simply read from the Scout manual about how to do dangerous things and then check the box….”

At some point along way, Alford and the others stumbled upon a book written by one of the founders of the Boy Scouts. Penned over hundred years ago, “[i]ts very pages ooze with rugged individualism and self reliance. This man taught his early Scouts to go into the woods and cut down trees to make their shelters (tents? Bah!), to hunt and kill their supper.” So rather than put up with this sort of thing, (he explains the Boy Scouts now give merit badges for video games) his family will take the handbook and teach themselves.

This is what everyone ought to do who isn’t happy with an organization like the Boy Scouts. Instead of filing a lawsuit, start your own club. Take all the time, energy, and money that would otherwise be spent on lawyers, and devote that to building an organization that is more to your liking. I can’t seem to understand why anyone would want to be involved with an organization that was forced by the state to include them.

Similar to the way that unschooling turns education on its head, this might be referred to as unscouting. Pick and choose how and where to hold activities, what subjects to study, and be as inclusive or discriminatory as you wish. No doubt there are plenty of people interested in some sort of scouting association that would be open to trying something new, and given the right circumstances, such a movement could do great things.

Additional News and Commentary

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First Thoughts on Marathon Bombing

I don’t have much free time to write anything about the bombings yesterday, but the LRC blog is full of good content. See William Anderson’s take, along with Ryan McMaken‘s, and Lew Rockwell’s thoughts, here and here.

A few notes: I’ve heard several people denounce the president for declaring something along the lines of “we’ll find out why this happened.” For these folks motive is no longer relevant, and looking to the root of a problem is irresponsible. Maybe if someone cared to look at motive, instead of blindly demanding “we punish” the terrorists, the invasion and destruction of Iraq could have been prevented.

As for some of the theories being shared about a false-flag, I’ve never understood this one point: if the mainstream media is not to be trusted as a general rule, why are they considered credible enough to be used in putting together a conspiracy narrative?

Some Quick Thoughts

Since I don’t have time right now to sit down and put together anything too in depth, here is a list of news items and my brief commentary.

This kid is a hero. He seems to do reasonably well in school, and clearly has his priorities straight. So he refused to waste his time on a dumb test, and made a mockery of the whole process. Such an afront to the education system can’t be tolerated, so he was punished by being forced to go to school.

Saudi Arabia, home to arguably one of the most repressive states, is the model upon which the GOP would like to build the U.S.

“By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s,” said (who else?) Paul Krugman in 1998. (Via LFB.) Three years later he would imply the Federal Reserve should fix the economy by inflating a real estate bubble, so….

 

LAPD Shoots First, Questions Later

After the L.A. cops started eating their own yesterday, inevtiably, innocent bystanders were caught up in the frenzied search for Christopher Dorner. Police employees from the Los Angeles area wrecklessly targeted as many as three people in two incidents, as LAist reported:

The first officer-involved shooting happened at about 5:20 a.m. in the 19500 block of Redbeam Avenue in Torrance, according to the L.A. Times. Two women delivering newspapers in a truck were struck by gunfire by L.A. police detectives from the Hollywood division. One woman was shot in the hand and the other in the back, Jesse Escochea, who captured video of the victims being treated, told the Times. Both victims were transported to a hospital.

The Times describes the crime scene: “After the shooting, the blue pickup was riddled with bullet holes and what appeared to be newspapers lay in the street alongside.”

The second incident occurred at Flagler Lane and Beryl Street about 5:45 a.m. and involved Torrance police. No injuries were reported.

Here’s a picture of the first shooting. Note that as many as two dozen rounds were fired into the vehicle, and were aimed at the head and torsos of the two occupants.

Reason Magazine’s Scott Shackford  wrote “We’ll see if any disciplinary actions follow. That should be interesting, given a huge chunk of Dorner’s diatribe was about how the police abuse the citizens they’re supposed to protect.”

All of this is happening when people across the country are engaged in a roaring debate over gun control. One of the major points made by gun controllers is that individual citizens lack the proper training or discipline required of gun ownership, and that we should all be satisfied to let the police agencies protect us.

Such incidents as this one, along with last summer’s episode of nine bystanders being peppered with bullets from New York City police employees, should raise doubts that monopolized protection agencies are the best possible system. It also throws water on the idea that only the government’s bureaucrats are responsible enough to be licensed gun carriers.