We’re overjoyed to see Scouting America, long known as the Boy Scouts of America, ditch the DEI policies it adopted amid the country’s post-2020 racial fever, as well as unwinding the dubious “pro-trans” approach it also felt obliged to undertake.
Kudos to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon for prompting the review, which we hope settles the matter permanently.
The left painted a bulls-eye on the Scouts years ago, aiming browbeat a mainstay of wholesome American traditions into culture-war submission.
As at many another institution, the folks in charge tried to compromise, betting that enough goodwill would allow the group to continue its core mission.
They did not give ground on the 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.”
At least, they didn’t give up the oath yet: It’s a hard truth that the left never stops “reforming” anything until it becomes just another servant of the unicause.
The universities are far down that road, as are once-proud liberal outfit like the ACLU; scouting might well have followed if the Pentagon hadn’t acted.
Note, too, that this reversal doesn’t undo other changes the organization chose in recent years, from welcoming girls into scouting to (with all due regard to safety and parent’s sensitivity) OK’ing openly gay scoutmasters.
As for the rest: The Pentagon had a perfect right and even duty here — it was ensuring US military contracts comply with the Trump executive orders banning the poisonously racist DEI approach; Scouting (like other institutions) can still prize the values that DEI pretends to support, which are entirely in keeping with its traditions.
The federal government in the Biden years exerted enormous pressure to impose DEI across the public and private sectors; it’s entirely appropriate to start undoing that damage now.
After all, the nation would have been far better off had President Woodrow Wilson’s successors undone his epic act of social engineering, forcing segregation on the federal civil service.
Of course the great peril here is that a Democratic president can reverse these Trump executive orders, and restore the Biden approach of mandating DEI and related lunacy. Congress really should write those orders into permanent law: Start the process now; if Democrats object, make it a central campaign issue.
