The Boy Scouts of America have filed for bankruptcy protection. While they may survive in some revised form, smaller and weaker than before, the Boy Scouts of old, as a great institution in American life, may be no more.
Frankly, they have been on a downward trajectory for some time. In a world in which consumer-electronics, from cell phones to game consoles, have taken over the entertainment options for children, modernity itself contributed greatly to the Boy Scouts’ decline.
But there is a difference between a weakening and a destruction… a difference between the natural loss of popularity and a concerted effort to destroy.
Left alone, the Boy Scouts might never again have approached the saturation they had at their peak (4 million members in 1973, half that today in a much more populous country).
A 50” television in the family room, with Wii, Switch or PS4, surrounded by friends and snacks, heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer, was bound to beat the old-fashioned allure of hiking in the woods, risking poison ivy, and shivering at night in a tent... for many boys, anyway, if not for all.
But that is only the easy explanation… the explanation that doesn’t require addressing the politics of the ongoing attack on the Boy Scouts that has lasted for a generation. In fact, there’s much more to it than that.
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