Picture this: A 12-year-old stands at the edge of a cold lake at 0600, staring down his swimming merit badge. Nobody asked if he was emotionally ready. Nobody offered a participation ribbon. His scoutmaster told him to jump in. He jumped. He earned it.
That is Scouting — or rather, that is what Scouting was and, if the Pentagon has anything to say about it, what Scouting will be again.
The entire architecture is an applied Aristotelian curriculum. The national office spent a decade dismantling it in favor of ideological programming.
I earned my Eagle Scout rank in the mid-1980s amid the last flicker of Reagan-era optimism. My father served as a district executive with the Boy Scouts of America from the late 1960s through the mid-1970s, when the mission of Scouting was unambiguous and its reputation beyond question.
I served as an assistant scoutmaster at summer camps. My son earned his Eagle Scout rank, went on to graduate from West Point, and now flies as an Army aviator. Three generations; one through-line.
When I graduated from Marine Corps Officer Candidate School in 1988, the discipline I carried with me — compass work, land navigation, physical endurance, mental toughness under discomfort — owed no small debt to what Scouting had already built into me.
