House of Eratosthenes

I’m trying to keep an open mind about Europe, really I am. But there’s something about this story that doesn’t quite add up. The Health Ministry of Belgium has declared that Boy Scouts can stop slaughtering chickens, thank you very much. If you go by the story, the Boy Scouts have been defending the practice as a way of teaching survival skills. The Health Ministry has decided this just doesn’t make any sense.

Why do I get the feeling that whoever it is at the Health Ministry taking “the view that the Scouts learnt nothing from using animals this way” wouldn’t know about living in the wilds if it crept up on them and bit ’em square in the ass?

Another problem — actually, no, not a problem, since I live in the United States and this just makes me happier that I do. Is it illegal to slaughter a chicken at a Boy Scout camp? C’mon, it is or it isn’t. One or t’other. Either way, there shouldn’t be a debate about this. Don’t hand me this line of crap about how some bureaucrat at the Health Ministry didn’t think it sounded good, so Nanny-State says the deal’s off. Sheesh. If that’s the way it works, you people in Belgium need to dress up like Indians and throw a few crates of tea into a harbor. Grow a pair.

The Health Ministry said in a statement issued on Monday that one Scout group had refused to stop teaching its lads how to carry out the bloody task even after complaints from parents.

Okay, I would hope this question is popping into everybody else’s head too: What in tarnation is wrong with people? A complaint from parents, oh me, oh my. We had better stop teaching this to all the lads, every single one of them. What’s this? One Scout group refuses to go along! I wonder if that one Scout group continues to teach chicken-slaughtering to the one kid whose parents complained — if they do, okay, I’ll go along with the idea that there’s a problem. But I doubt that’s the case. Hey, here’s a thought. If my kid goes to your Scout camp, and you teach the kids how to kill chickens, and some soccer-mom complains about it and you stop teaching all the kids chicken-killing to make this one yutz happy — guess what? I’m going to call in and complain. That would then be a “complaint from a parent” in the opposite direction, and you’d better treat it as such.

This has got to be said somewhere: Boy Scouts does not mix with political correctness, and anybody who tries to make it do so, is a fool. The two concepts are one hundred and eighty degrees apart. Political correctness is all about sanitizing things. Making sure human events and behaviors fit into established norms. Boy Scouts is all about surviving human events that do not fit into established norms — like getting lost in the woods. Boy Scouts teaches you to weather it out when the unexpected happens. How to not be such a freakin’ pussy.

You know when you’re out on a weekend hike with your buddies, and one among you is constantly bellyaching about the food is bad, it’s too hot, we’re going too far, I’m thirsty, my feet hurt, can we go home now? The lard-ass that ruins all the fun. Boy Scouts teaches you how not to be that guy. That’s an important survival skill in itself, and I’ll tell you why. If I’m out there on a nice day and I want to be able to do some fun stuff, and this sissy keeps me from doing it because he wants to be like a short leash on everyone else’s neck, people like me would just love to smash his chubby little face in.

The older I get, the more impressed I am about this truism of life. Some of the most annoying people I have known, are the people who second-guess what they do, so that such actions fit some pre-conceived standard of what’s “normal” thereby, they hope, making other people happy. Some of the least annoying people, are the people who just go ahead & do (legal) things and ask questions later. To put it a much shorter way: I doubt like hell you’ll ever hear anyone say “That Joe sure is a swell guy, he never kills chickens.”

In this case, you’re better off going ahead & killing the damn chickens. Whether it is approval you seek, popularity, or just some hot food for your empty stomach when you’re lost in the woods.

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Go Choke Your Chicken Somewhere ElseTuesday, June 28th, 2005

Go Choke Your Chicken Somewhere Else
Tuesday, June 28th, 2005