An enthusiastic reader:

The Boy Scouts of America were born today 100 years ago!
A Congressional charter was issued on Feb. 8, 1910, and that’s been the birthday for the BSA ever since; this year is our centennial.
While we’ve kept our focus on outdoor education, leadership development, and character formation that whole century, and still are going strong, we’re being defunded by more and more United Ways, and are blocked or barred from use of schools, public buildings, and camping grounds (many of which 70 years ago we bought and built, but then gave to the same municipalities which are now forbidding our use) — for no reasons other than (a) we still have one joining requirement for youth, a Scout Oath with the phrase “to do my duty to God and my country,” which if you won’t say (whatever you mean by God, we don’t ask and don’t care), then you can’t join; and (b) we have leadership standards that say adult leaders’ public reputation can be grounds for dismissal (and that applies to gay or straight, although you usually only hear about the gays removed from leadership — Scouting will also yank adult leader status for heterosexual public misbehavior).
Anyhow, I raise all this because I think some shout-outs to Scouts will go over very well in The Corner today, and I ask for you to throw us a salute or two through this historic day! Scouting is England’s best gift to America, in my opinion, and we all celebrated old Baden-Powell’s achievement in August of 1907. I hope you can help us mark our national 100th around today.

Glad to help, Sir. I was a CCF grunt myself. It was a binary thing: you joined the Scouts, or the CCF. The Scouts envied our guns, we respected their wilderness skills. I’ll admit we snickered at the uniform too; though looking back, we cadets probably looked pretty ridiculous ourselves, squeaking out parade-ground commands in regular army hand-me-down battledress three sizes too big. I’ve only written at length about scouting once, here. For the current dismal situation in New York City, see this news item from America’s Newspaper of Record.