Milton Caniff, Comic Strip Artist "Steve Canyon" (Eagle Scout) Bill Clinton, U.S. President (Cub Scout) Walter Cronkite - Journalist, T.V. commentator Yeah, I see what you mean.
thnx for a very good post. i took the above sentence as a quote because it perfectly illustrates where we differ. i see in my child how intensely different information shapes her mental landscape. recently she was with her mami on an environmental exhibition and now she is fond of trains and explains to everybody why it is better to go by train then instead in each car only one or max two people drive the same way. she really connects to the topic on a from my perspective deep level. now, and here comes the point, if i tell her that the best human interaction happens in military context, i am telling her something ... wrong. and this "wrong" is where the two of us will probably not agree ...
when i was twelve or so i spend a summer building rafts of big strunks. being out whole day, having a fire in the evening with potatoes beneath. and it was absolute nono to use paper for the fire, no matter if it was rainy. great time. completely on our own. about four or five of us. would not want to miss that experience. funny, i do not have many precise memories of certain events, but the overall smell and feeling is very present.
i guess i would probably qualifiy better for che guevara than for sergeant goodobedient. i am in most of the things i do swimming against the tide. not always big fun, just my way of doing things. for those who want to use this against me liberalfaggot: feel free to copy this out!
Just out of curiosity, are you more afraid of the respect and discipline the boy scouts teaches or the fact that your 12 year old daughter can get an abortion without your consent?
for questions of this kind there are normally two answers, one way or the other. sometimes there is a third one, like i think with yours: the question itself contains an "error". you seem to imply that i either let her go the scouts or i most likely will face her having an abortion with twelve. i do not know where you live, but in my world there are some other options.
oh, absolutely not. as i tried to point out earlier there are absolute marvellous things about the organisation. no doubt. seriously. i just can't live with exposing little children to military-like settings. and to me uniforms (dresscodes similar to military uniform if you will), badges, ranks fall into that ...
one thing in addition. i hope she won't get pregnant at twelve, but i STRONGLY hope i will have been the kind of father up to then, that she can go to with even that kind of the problem.