In case you did not know this, the Boy Scouts of America prefer that atheists and homosexuals find a different organization to join. The first makes sense because the BSA is fundamentally a faith-based group, and atheists would not strictly be able to complete the religious requirements. The latter is understandable because scouting is meant to be a parent-child partnership; while an 11-year-old probably will not have a defined sexuality that would exclude him from participation, a gay adult theoretically has no child of his own and therefore has no role to play. There are exceptions, such as legal guardians, and generally those exceptions are made.

True, the Czar has teased the BSA for watering down some training and doing too many trendy bunny courses, but fundamentally this is picture is exactly what scouting remains. A Boy Scout from 1945 would totally recognize and respect today’s scouts. And that says a lot.

Because a small number of atheists and a small number of gays tried to join Scouts for the sole purpose of making trouble and then suing for damages, the BSA had to adopt a strict policy prohibiting both—the intent of both groups was to bankrupt the BSA through legal fees, and the Czar thinks it is fundamentally criminal to attempt to destroy an organization because they have strict preferences over membership.

As such, liberal culture hates the BSA. Loathes them. Cannot abide them. After all, the BSA determined a perfectly legal way to defend themselves that the Supreme Court backed. And because popular liberal culture loves to find enemies, what better than a simple enemy that basically embarrassed the hell out of them in public. These liberals decided that the BSA has got to go.

And because atheists and gays failed to make a dent, the libs have been going for the whole Catholic Church argument: attack the BSA as a group that knowingly hid child molesters in its ranks. Recently, the BSA released its records to the public regarding the extent of claims.

Basically, the MSM wants you to know, there have been thousands of cases going back to the 1970s in which child predators molested scouts, and the BSA did very little to stop the predators, and even let them rejoin when thrown out.

Or, to put it more accurately, out of millions of scouts, less than 1% were ever at risk… which is substantially lower than the risks to non-scouts among the general population. This is because the BSA tried to do rudimentary screening of adults long before there were standard procedures, background checks available to the public, or computerized records. And when the BSA was alerted to a predator, in most cases the BSA notified the police but was told not much could be done since these types of laws were not well developed and these types of criminals not well understood by law enforcement. And when the BSA threw the monsters out, they could easily go to another state and start over because the BSA had a paper file in a paper record in a filing cabinet miles away. That’s right, moron journalists: the BSA did not have a SQL database set up in the cloud accessible through an XML front end because it was freaking 1973.

The BSA responded gradually as they could: over time, training and prevention programs became developed and tested, and the numerous tricks and scams used by the predators were identified. But this took considerable time, and indeed by the 1990s—when the problem was better understood by numerous organizations—the BSA was using the latest tools and methods to prevent predators from getting into scouts.

This is not to say that children were never harmed by adults in scouting. Nor is this to say the BSA acted properly in all cases. Indeed, in too many cases, individuals within the BSA attempted to sweep problems away. And yes, the motivation in many of these cases was to protect the reputation of the BSA scouting program, and little concern was given to the boys involved.

But once again, these occurred in extremely small numbers compared to the success of scouting overall. Even at their least effective, the BSA still did better than teachers’s unions do at weeding out their predators even today.

More importantly, the MSM’s salivating and hand-rubbing over the horrors revealed in these reports suffers from a simple logical fallacy: you cannot judge the actions of the BSA by today’ standards. In these stories, as we read them, we find not-too-subtle accusations implicit in the reporting: files were lost, police were never notified, kids were put back in harm’s way, and so on. Yes, by the standards of 2012, these would be terrible actions today.

In 1981, or 1975, or 1989, or 1970, the reality is that paper files tucked in random file cabinets were lost. Police were not notified because the nature of the criminal procedure was unclear. Kids were put back in harm’s way because—get this—there was no way to tell if the kid was lying back then.

This last one is a doozy if you were born after 1980. But it is true. In 2012, if a twelve-year-old’s parents claimed a scoutmaster molested him, police would be called for documentation, the child questioned by trained medical personnel, lawyers would review protocols for verification, and law enforcement would doublecheck the background of the accused.

In 1981, if a twelve-year-old’s parents claimed a scoutmaster molested him, the local scouting council would realize that Chuck has been with them for 15 years now without any problem, that the parents were probably going for a cheap money grab, and the Chuck’s reputation would be ruined by these greedy bastards. Heck, the Methodist church elders might even shut down the whole program if this crap gets out. If the story seemed convincing, well, hell—maybe the kid misunderstood what Chuck was doing. We had no other complaints—let’s quietly find something else for Chuck to do within the organization and hope the whole thing dies down. If the story was particularly serious, and you know, rumors say Chuck might have done something similar before, the local council might call the chief of police and ask what to do. Back then, the chief would say “Unless someone saw Chuck in flagrante, there isn’t much you can do. Better not risk it: kick him out before he does something worse.” Done.

This sounds like a whole lot of excuses, but blaming the BSA for not following 2012 protocol four decades ago is like accusing the Utah state police of incompetence because they didn’t use DNA evidence to nab Gary Gilmore earlier.

And it must be said again: the percentage of kids who were even remotely at risk during that period is about one-eighth the size of kids not in scouting. Scouting is inherently safe, and by God the BSA has been on the vanguard of prevention, training, reaction, and identification. The MSM can celebrate this evidence as proof that the BSA should accept atheists and gays, but they fail to realize that the safety program protecting kids in thousands of modern children’s organizations across the country were very likely developed by the BSA.

PS: MSM, you should probably know that scouts are trained to be patriots. Yeah, they even learn how to hoist, fly, and fold the American flag. You might want to add that to the list of things to bitch about.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.