GET OFF MY HONOR: A REVIEW

 

 

 

Rudy Takala
August 16, 2005
NewsWithViews.com

I recently finished reading Hans Zeiger’s new book, Get Off My Honor: The Assault on the Boy Scouts of America. It attempted to demonstrate, as most political books have done as of late, that a certain institution is being victimized.

The way we attempt to frame political debates in modern times is an amusing phenomenon to observe. People aren’t so interested in what’s philosophically right or wrong as they are in what factions are being most oppressed by other factions in society. From David Limbaugh’s Persecution to Ann Coulter’s Slander to David Brock’s The Republican Noise Machine, everyone wants to be a victim.

While the thesis of Get Off My Honor isn’t exactly an exception, the cases backing it are a bit more credible than those frequently used to prove the persecution alleged in other books. In the past decade, liberal assaults on the Boy Scouts have been more organized, more numerous, and strangely more viperous than their assaults on other conservative institutions. The Boy Scouts embody everything liberals hate, and liberals seem to believe that the mood of the American people is such that they’ll be more agreeable to regulating the Boy Scouts than other Christian institutions.

That’s probably because many Americans have an absurd predilection for equality, and they don’t like anyone excluding anyone else from anything for any reason. As Zeiger observed, “What [Alexis de] Tocqueville said about the desire of democratic peoples for equality is certainly a reality in America today…. Instead of a movement toward equal rights of opportunity-the right to the “pursuit of happiness” and such-minority groups have made a loud cry for an inalienable right to absolute equality of condition.”[1]

The book also takes a slight deviation from the norm of its peers by detailing why, exactly, the Boy Scouts are actually a good thing. Many books, in their authors’ zealous quest to incontrovertibly demonstrate the malicious victimization of their favorite group, fail to inform us why their organization is worth appreciating. Zeiger bothers to remind us that the basic virtues for which the Boy Scouts stand, such as honor, loyalty and honesty, are good things.

At the same time, however, there are many flaws in his analysis. While the Boy Scouts are certainly not a malignant organization, they aren’t a sacred one, either. Is it true that their age and place in tradition alone makes them good? “Young people desperately need permanent things to understand life and grow into responsible, respectful citizens,” writes Zeiger, and he purports that this in contrast to modern America, where “Americans [exist] on a perilous, unspiritual diet of change and instability.”[2]

Why do we need the Boy Scouts to provide an icon of stability in our culture? Isn’t the Bible stable enough? Biblical precepts that are thousands of years old shouldn’t need recreational organizations to help reinforce their constancy.

Another curiosity posed by the book is the manner in which almost all liberals are accused of being “extreme individualists.” At one point, Zeiger praises the words of Frank Hearn: “One may have the right to self-esteem or feeling good… but being good-being in a way that permits one to realize institutional goals-is an achievement. One earns self-respect only through the disciplined work of performing institutional duties or achieving institutional ideals.”[3]

Such words were reminiscent of Julius Evola, a former Italian fascist, when, in Men Among the Ruins, he described the sort of people who supported fascist regimes. “The inferior never lives a fuller life than when he feels his existence is subsumed in a greater order endowed with a center; then he feels like a man standing before leaders of men, and experiences the pride of serving as a free man in his proper station,” wrote Evola.[4]

It seems almost absurd that a conservative today could come to a consensus with Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy in scorning the evils inherent to individualism. Throughout history, fascists and communists have been alone in spitting on individualism. Individuals don’t destroy societies through war and genocide. It takes a collective, and that destruction is pretty much all collectives are good for.

In another instance, Zeiger wrote, “Honor is cultivated within communities and organizations that compose the culture. The culture-its ideas, customs, symbols, and heritage-causes individuals to find for themselves a higher calling, a purpose connected to the culture.”[5] Why does this sound like Hillary Clinton reminding us “it takes a village”? More often than not, villages are full of deranged cannibals. Virtue, of which honor is a component, proceeds from God. Communities, if anything, are usually little more than an obstruction to virtue.

Get Off My Honor details the history of the Boy Scouts, the nature of its enemies, and the implications of allowing them to destroy the Scouts. Unfortunately, many of the objectives for which the book claims we should strive are questionable. Still, the Boy Scouts are in the midst of an unfinished war on American culture, and Hans Zeiger represents a strong element of conservatism’s coming vanguard. Get Off My Honor is an illuminating hermeneutic with which we may understand the nature of the conflict within our culture; a conflict, I suspect, that has yet to reach its apogee.

Footnotes:

1, Hans Zeiger, Get Off My Honor, (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2005) 44
2, Zeiger, 1
3, Zeiger, 40
4, Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins, (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International, 2002) 142
5, Zeiger, 41

© 2005 Rudy Takala - All Rights Reserved