[1CAVCCO15MED]

I am an Eagle scout, my son is an Eagle scout and my grandson is working on his Life. If you really want to understand the Boy Scout's stand on religion, just look at all the religious badges a kid can get: Protestant, Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Armenian, Hindu. Zoroastrarian, Mormon. These are a few. All that is required is a belief in some higher power. By that definition even Wiccans can join. The ACLU just wishes it could be as tolerant. Environmentalists? The Boy Scouts were environmentally conscious when environmentalism wasn't cool, even in the teens and twenties. They called it conservation back then. Now Leave No Trace camping is taught when in the wilderness. Globalism? They have a merit badge called Citizenship in the World. It is required for the Eagle rank, along with Citizenship in the Nation and Citizenship in the Community. This Saturday we are picking up foodstufffs in bags we distributed a couple of weeks ago for Scouting For Food. We collect tons of food for the disadvantaged, even those cursed welfare recipients. We don't sue polluters, we clean up pollution. We don't protest logging, we plant trees. We clean up lakeshores, beaches. We even stopped a battle at Gettysburg. The scouts were at at the 50 year reunion at the battle site. Each of the veterans, the youngest in their seventies, had a Boy Scout to help them get around. Both the Union and Confederate vets met in good fellowship and things went very well until.... When they got to the bloody angle where fighting was worst and where Pickett's charge made it's only reaching of the Union lines, the "spirit" got the best of the old men and the second battle of Gettysburg started with canes as weapons. The Boy Scouts broke it up. Most important of all, we teach aboy what a real man is like. We respect the kid and show him he can do things he never imagined he could do. About a month ago we had a kid with a hip condition finish a 22 mile day hike in the mountains on the Appalachian Trail. We gave him ample opportunities to quit but he refused. This is a kid whose grandmother wouldn't even let him get up to get the TV remote. One of our boys after being in the Marines, hiked the entire Appalachian Trail in one summer, all 2400 miles of it. Another commands a unit of Apache attack choppers in Iraq. He is one of three that went to military academies. Not only that we have a former member of our troop teaching in the most liberal college in the nation the name which eludes me right now. It is the one group in the US that does not tie it's beliefs to the left or the right. There is ample room for attack from both the left or right but I believe in these polarized iconoclastic times are over we will need groups like this. Nobody supports ALL the Bill of Rights more than the Boy Scouts.