VideoPosted on 07/29/2010 6:21:55 PM PDT by SandRat
WASHINGTON, July 28, 2010 – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates today shared his personal experiences and passion for Boy Scouting with tens of thousands of Scouts and their families gathered for the 100th anniversary celebration of the Boy Scouts of America. Video
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Gates, an Eagle Scout who has served on the National Executive Board of the Boy Scouts and is past president of the National Eagle Scout Association, shared his experiences growing up as a Boy Scout, earning scouting’s top rank 52 years ago, and being involved in his son’s Boy Scout troop. Even after serving eight presidents and years of working with world leaders, the secretary said, his memories of his Scout leaders are just as memorable.
Noting that their lives were “a bit unusual,” Gates told of going on a father-son camping trip when he was CIA director. “A hundred yards from our encampment were three, large black vans, a satellite dish, and a number of armed security officers surrounding the campsite,” he said. “Now there’s a challenge no Scoutmaster could have anticipated.”
Gates told the Scouts he was speaking to them “as a leader from one generation talking with the leaders of the next generation,” and said he was like most of them when he achieved the rank of Eagle Scout at age 15.
“I wasn’t a straight-A student, nor was I a particularly good athlete,” he said. “I wasn’t really a student leader.” When he arrived in Washington, D.C., at age 22 to begin work at the CIA, he said, “I could fit everything I owned into the back seat of my car. I had no connections and I didn’t know a soul.”
Earning the Eagle Scout’s badge was “the only thing I had done in my life that led me to think that I could make a difference; that I could be a leader,” he said to applause. “It was the first thing I had done that told me I might be different because I had worked harder, was more determined, more goal-oriented, more persistent than most others.”
The secretary told the Scouts some of them will go on to be leaders in industry, the government and the military. But most importantly, he said, scouting has set them on the path to “becoming a man of integrity and decency, a man of moral courage, a man unafraid of hard work, a man of strong character – the kind of person who built this country and made it the greatest democracy and the greatest economic powerhouse in the history of the world.
“A scout is marked for life as an example of what a boy and man can be and should be,” he continued. “You are role models.”
In the past 100 years, Gates said, there has been no better program for preparing future leaders than the Boy Scouts. “The fate of our nation in the years to come and the future of the world itself depend on the kind of people we modern Americans prove to be,” he said.
The secretary acknowledged that much has changed in the 50 years since he was a Boy Scout.
“We live in an America today where the young are increasingly physically unfit and society as a whole languishes in ignoble moral ease,” he said. “But not in scouting.”
There are too many places in American life today without the Boy Scouting values of self-reliance, self-control, honor, integrity and morality, Gates said. “From Wall Street to Washington to our hometowns,” he said, “in all our lives there are people who seek after riches or the many kinds of power without regard to what is right or true or decent.
“I am here today because I believe in the extraordinary power of scouting to be a force for good in a community and in the lives of its boys and young men,” he continued. “As I look out at all of you, I see the legacy of scouting: a new generation of worthy leaders. …With leaders such as you, America will continue to be the beacon of hope and decency and justice for the rest of the world.”
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The Scouts should have never made this President an Honorary President of the Scouts. It was a waste of paper. He would rather be on TV with five silly hags then address the BSA.
Screw him.
The Scouts should have never made this President an Honorary President of the Scouts. It was a waste of paper. He would rather be on TV with five silly hags then address the BSA.
Screw him.
Read the speech this morning - not bad
Too bad BO was too busy with the View shrews to attend.
Son #4 is at Jambo so I hope to get a full account when he comes home.
The reason Obama couldn’t attend the Jamboree is because the Boy Scouts are on the liberals ____-list because of their stand on homosexual scout leaders. Good liberals consider the Scouts to be a useless organization because of upholding certain values.
Since Obama is a good liberal, and good liberals loathe the Scouts, he sidestepped a lot of issues with his liberal/radical base by avoid this event.
Gates better be careful about supporting the scouts, the lavender lobby still hasn’t forgiven the BSA for not allowing openly gay men to serve as scout leaders. He could find himself in trouble with the regime.
If he had an ounce of integrity, he would have never accepted continuing on as Defense Secretary.
And there are rumors this clown is running for POTUS. He's not even fit to hold the office he currently holds, much less POTUS.
What did he tell them? "You all have to join the military when you turn 18 because the rest of America is a bunch of lazy dopers."
Having the big Zero there would have been an insult to every scout attending.
They should have named Bush or Cheney.
I’ve sent the text of the speech to our troop and plan to use it as a recruiting tool.
It was an excellent speech, far better than Zero could have ever done.
We’ll be loyal scouts
I cherish my Eagle certificate with Reagan’s signature on it.
I’m very happy that Gates was able to connect the generations of scouting through his personal scouting success, so many years ago.
I’m also happy that Zer0 took a pass from speaking at one of the most transforming institutions that real American boys aspire to.
Zer0 was busy tingling the legs at the View, and as Zer0 would have given some sappy telepromptered speech; as he was never a scout; never an American child; never done anything to be proud of; only a Chicago street pimp who was mistakenly voted in as pre—sent; anything that TOTUS said would have been as in-genuine as he himself!
I agree on that one, there are probably a number of other men, including former astronauts, military leaders, and possibly some former presidents of the United States, that have spent a lot more time to earn an honorable presidency in the BSA. I have been a scout myself.
I have to ask, have former Apollo astronauts been awarded yet? Military leaders, veterans from these conflicts. I wonder what Gates has done to earn this honorable award in comparison to other candidates, but then again, I possibly may not know him.
Of course. I would have been much more surprised if he actually showed up. What would his liberal buddies have thought. And everyone else would know he was just being a hypocrite.
No, glad he stayed away.
Good remarks from Sec. Gates.
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