Too many young men in America are broken. They are
consumed by hate. Their lives are devoid of love – they aren’t receiving it,
nor are they giving.
Vicious teenage boys mentally torture their peers
in ways we never would have imagined as kids. That relentless needling has
caused many of the bullied to end their lives, seeing death as the only way to
escape the brutality.
Boys – and men behaving like boys – have mistreated
women badly for too long. The much-welcomed #MeToo movement has been changing
the power structure and culture of abuse in business, government, academia, and
entertainment decades after women were allegedly granted power through the
women’s lib movement. How did what these women are fighting become normal
behavior for so many men?
Then there’s the issues of school shootings and
gang violence. It’s always young men pulling the triggers and indiscriminately
killing their peers. It takes an evil soul to want to inflict such carnage on
those you grew up with and shared the schools, playgrounds, and streets with.
And, we can’t forget the hatred towards self that
is manifested in the opiate crisis. Just a few years ago, the demographic of
the opiate addict was a 38 to 42 year-old father who got hooked on pain killers
as an unfortunate outcome of a work injury. Today, it’s 18 to 22 year kids who
pick up the drugs for kicks, despite the incredible amount of public awareness
on the ills of heroin.
How do we as a society overcome all of the hate?
We don’t seem to be doing a good job of that at
all.
That’s because we teach and preach to the negative.
School administrators, the media, public figures, and parents routinely say
“don’t do this” or “don’t do that.” It’s rare that we deliver messages of personal
growth and betterment to the positive with a far more powerful “do this” or “do
that.”
It seems that we know what constitutes hate, but we
haven’t created a counterculture to it.
Or have we?
The Boy Scouts of America has always offered such
an alternative.
To simplify the goals of the organization, the
purpose of Scouting is to help create better husbands, fathers, volunteers, and
leaders. That is done through life-changing personal development exercises in
the form of any number of fun, engaging experiences from camping to merit
badges to service projects.
While participating in these activities and living
their lives outside of the pack or troop, Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts follow some
simple yet effective rules that define the parameters of personal behavior
while serving as a guiding light for the love of mankind and the betterment of
the world for everyone.
Consider the Scout Motto (Be prepared), the Scout Slogan
(Do a good turn daily), the points of the Scout Law (A Scout is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful,
Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and
Reverent) and the Scout Oath (On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to
God and my country and to obey the Scout
Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight).
Those are some pretty powerful
moral and personal codes to live by.
We need more of that in America,
but it hasn’t been happening. In recent years, membership in Scouting has been
around 2.3 million, down from a peak of 5.2 million in 1960. Boys haven’t been
exposed to the program like they once were because of the changed make-ups of
families, busy moms and dads, the plethora of alternative youth programs
(sports, band), electronic media becoming a babysitter, and the disinterest
some parents have in what they perceive to be “traditional values.”
A resurgence in Scouting could be
what saves the American male. Scouts don’t make up the abusers and killers who
give men a really bad name. Hate isn’t in a scout’s vocabulary; instead, he learns
and lives by love. Scouts are the ones aiding the oppressed, saving lives, helping
to build up their communities, and making the world a better place.
Just take a look at some of the
results locally. The Iroquois Trail Council, which oversees 2,300 scouts in
eastern Niagara and the GLOW counties had another banner year of results in
2017: 51 scouts completed dramatic, world-changing Eagle projects; our boys contributed
more than 50,000 hours of their time to community service projects; and they
stocked local food pantries with 12.5 tons of goods.
Those are just a few of the
trackable victories. There are countless more that don’t show up in statistics
like the things these boys and teens do in their day-to-day lives to ensure their
classmates, families, and neighbors have far better days on this planet.
We need more young men like them.
If there was ever a way to beat hate in America, it’s with Scouting.
From the 05 March 2018 Greater Niagara Newspapers and Batavia Daily News
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