Happy 94th to Boy Scouts

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This week, the Boy Scouts of America celebrates the 94th anniversary of its incorporation. On a probably cold winter day back in 1910, when America's dreams of being a world power were shared by perhaps only a handful, a charitable organization was formally created that would, over the next 94 years, instill virtue, love of nature, excitement, wonder and manhood in tens of millions of American boys.

Yet, in recent years, caught up in the larger culture wars that are ravaging Western civilization, many in America have come to loathe not love, criticize not praise, and sue not support, this most American of institutions. Why? I'm not really sure other than perhaps a bit of envy on their part.

But, at a time when the most frequent gesture to be witnessed on American TV seems to be the crotch grab, and public eloquence is measured not by the beauty of phraseology but by the number of curse words one can cram into a sentence, it is indeed appropriate to thank the Boy Scouts of America -- battered and tattered as it may be -- for continuing to stand tall for God, country and family.

With the flurry of lawsuits against the Boy Scouts for refusing to allow homosexual men to lead its members or atheists to infiltrate its ranks still fresh in the clerks' offices of courthouses across America, those who support the scouting movement should challenge the anti-scouters to let us know which of the following 40 words comprising the Boy Scout Oath, they find so objectionable:

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 fit, mentally awake and morally straight.

I, for one, would be genuinely interested to learn which of these words the Scouts' critics disdain.