A seminal moment in the lives of tens of thousands of young men occurred in 2017 when they attended the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) National Jamboree, where they were addressed by President Donald Trump. The Jambo traditionally has always been a transformative experience for the youths who attend it — two weeks away from their families in a tween- and teen-boy paradise, a sylvan Never Land where they can belch and play with cool, nerdy stuff and whittle and stink without having to worry about impressing girls or being nagged not to do something dangerous.
Anywhere from 2% to 5% of Boy Scouts journey to the quadrennial National Jamboree. At its peak, the BSA hosted 50,960 attendees at the 1964 Jamboree at Valley Forge, Pa., and President Lyndon B. Johnson gave a speech. Attendance waned and waxed over the years, and in 2017, around 40,000 Scouts went to the Jambo at the Summit Bechtel Reserve, a 10,600-acre property in West Virginia that had been donated to BSA. (This year, only 15,000 are expected to attend.)
On one of the final nights of the 2017 campout, the Scouts and leaders convened in Summit Stadium to hear an address by the President of the United States. Trump’s full speech can be seen at the bottom of this article if you have an extra 45 minutes you’re looking to kill. If you watch any of it, you will frequently hear the roar of tens of thousands of young men who are clearly loving the attention from Orange Man Bad.
To put the massive event in perspective, this was when the “The Future is Female” movement was cranking up and boys were being disparaged, slandered, stifled, and tossed aside in favor of prioritizing girls’ prospects in society. Scouting was one of the last existing organizations dedicated exclusively to boys and their particular inclinations, interests, and development for a successful future. So naturally, the organization was under attack.
Fort A.P. Hill kicked the Scouts out after the 2010 Jamboree — the 29th one the base had hosted — because the BSA — with its ban on openly gay Scoutmasters and its exclusion of females — was a poor fit for then-President Obama’s new woke military. Speaking of Barry, he bucked tradition by declining to travel to the Jamboree to address the boys in person — twice. It was insulting at the time, and also unnerving, as the president’s decision was emblematic of establishment disfavor aimed at the traditionalist, faithful, and masculinist youth program.
Not only that, but in 2017, some of the headliner musical acts who were supposed to entertain the boys flounced out of their agreements, citing the organization’s not-woke-enough leanings. The fact that they must have known what the BSA was when they first agreed to perform but preferred to make a dramatic statement at the expense of thousands of children was particularly nasty.
When Trump beat Hillary Clinton, hired man’s man Gen. Jim Mattis to revive the demoralized military, and threw political correctness back in the institutions’ faces, American boys and men of all ages were thrilled. And when Trump flew into the West Virginia mountains on Marine One to give one of his rousing, patriotic rally performances to the tens of thousands of disaffected boys who’d been living in the wild for weeks, they were loudly and enthusiastically appreciative.
And we can’t have that.
The Establishment was swift to strike back. The dinosaur media clutched their pearls at Trump’s uncouth inclusion of political topics in his speech. Never mind that one of the bands that did perform, X Ambassadors, felt it appropriate to lecture the children on how they needed to celebrate the LGBTQ cause. They did this even though the BSA had already lifted the ban on openly gay Scout leaders, but still allowed chartering organizations — which were mostly churches — to make their own decisions on the subject. The horror! The injustice!
At the same time, celebrity and civilian TDS sufferers alike hit social media to liken the event to a Hitler Youth Rally. (Yes, they called innocent children “Nazis” for enjoying a speech by the President of the United States.) Ironically, check out this year’s first fully intersectional Jamboree theme:
Forward … Hmm, where have we seen that theme for a youth organization before? Oh, that’s right — it was in German that time.
Also following Trump’s appearance at the 2017 Jamboree, many Scouts’ moms, who had been apoplectic since he was elected and couldn’t handle their sons’ enjoyment of the event, wrote screechy, enraged, tear-soaked letters and Facebook comments to BSA National Headquarters, demanding that something be done to atone for the sin of giving the U.S. president a platform.
Within days, the BSA and Chief Scout Executive Michael Surbaugh posted apologies. But that was never going to be enough. Mere months later, national Scouting leadership, already under intense pressure from its corporate sponsors to go fully intersectional, removed the final restriction that made the Boy Scouts a unique youth program: the mighty, formerly boys-only BSA announced that girls would be allowed to become Scouts. It was finally time to quash the last remaining bastion of toxic masculinity!
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To be sure, National HQ had been wrestling for some years with declining Scout enrollment numbers. The BSA mothership was ready to try to widen Scouting’s appeal to attract more kids and their families. They had already been dabbling in things like loosening uniform requirements and building skate parks at their high adventure camps. Opening the doors to Scouts and Scout leaders with non-traditional sexuality and then to girls may have seemed like a no-brainer — cast a wider net, catch more fish — but it was predestined to fail. This is because the changes gutted Scouting of the things that made it Scouting. Once the final erasure took place and girls were invited in, there was nothing left to make the program stand out from any other youth organization.
Now, as Scoutmasters across the country prepare to lead their troops to the 2023 Jamboree, they receive forms from the organizers asking them things like whether there are any trans or nonbinary Scouts in their troop so that their “additional needs” can be met. Scouts at the Jambo can hear from luminaries such as former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah L. Birx or Elaine P. Ho, the Chief Diversity Officer at NASA. Attendees can swing by the three-day inaugural “Women of Character” event, “designed to foster thought leadership, generate support for female-centric Scouting units across the United States, and ensure that young women have the opportunity to participate in the life-changing experiences that Scouting provides.” No presidential visit is planned, however.
In truth, the Scouting movement was ebbing because society was changing: young people were growing more self-absorbed, spending time online rather than outdoors, and becoming reliant on “the government,” not one’s self, to take care of everything. If Scouting had stuck to its original founding principles, it may have persevered indefinitely, smaller but still highly attractive to those boys and their families who valued the Scout Oath and Law. Pretending Scouting can be all things to all people, however, will do nothing but make it common, nothing special, and not of particular interest to anyone.
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Here’s President Trump’s historic speech to 40,000 Boy Scouts at the 2017 Jamboree:
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