| I'm an Eagle Scout too and I guess I don't really have a strong opinion because scouting here in CO is fundamentally different in my eyes than what I grew up with in CA. In my troop, once a year we'd spend one weekend spreading flyers about our annual garage sale, over the following week we'd pick stuff up, then the next weekend we'd use the community clubhouse that was our home-base for meetings for a blow-out garage sale. We'd clear $15-20k in a week, give everyone who donated a tax slip for their donation, and sit pretty for the rest of the year with regard to our outings. Plus we'd do a clearinghouse in the last few hours of the sale where you could fill a trashbag up with anything and pay $5 for it. (I got stuff like suits, laser prints and antique cameras for <$1) These massive fund-raisers are why we could finance trips to places like Hawaii or Scotland every few years and had outings like going to Camp Pendleton for paintball wars, plus we were helping the community by moving their junk. Here in CO, the Boy Scouts do the door-to-door sales thing with over-priced caramel corn and the like. I'd rather just give the troop $20 than spend $10 on a little bag of popcorn. Maybe that's part of the GS issue, a lot of Boy Scout troops are basically just copying the Girl Scouts' business model. But I guess what I'm saying is, there are a lot of factors that go into your fundamental scouting experience (I honestly give all credit to the crazy outdoor dads that were in my troop at the time), so I'm trying to observe this transition more than question/judge it. I can't think of any good reason why the Scout Law shouldn't be ubiquitous in American society. |