The Pentagon is trying to restore the Boy Scouts to their former glory

Picture this: A 12-year-old stands at the edge of a cold lake at 0600, staring down his swimming merit badge. Nobody asked if he was emotionally ready. Nobody offered a participation ribbon. His scoutmaster told him to jump in. He jumped. He earned it.

That is Scouting — or rather, that is what Scouting was and, if the Pentagon has anything to say about it, what Scouting will be again.

The entire architecture is an applied Aristotelian curriculum. The national office spent a decade dismantling it in favor of ideological programming.

I earned my Eagle Scout rank in the mid-1980s amid the last flicker of Reagan-era optimism. My father served as a district executive with the Boy Scouts of America from the late 1960s through the mid-1970s, when the mission of Scouting was unambiguous and its reputation beyond question.

I served as an assistant scoutmaster at summer camps. My son earned his Eagle Scout rank, went on to graduate from West Point, and now flies as an Army aviator. Three generations; one through-line.

When I graduated from Marine Corps Officer Candidate School in 1988, the discipline I carried with me — compass work, land navigation, physical endurance, mental toughness under discomfort — owed no small debt to what Scouting had already built into me.

The memorandum of understanding signed on February 27, 2026, between Scouting America and the Pentagon is not bureaucratic fine print. It is a cultural rescue operation.

Under pressure from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Scouting America agreed to abandon divisive diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; enforce biological sex distinctions in membership and facilities; and discontinue the politicized “Citizenship in Society” merit badge.

The organization will introduce a new military service merit badge developed with the Department of War; waive registration fees for children of active-duty, Guard, and Reserve families; and rededicate itself formally to duty to God, duty to country, and service.

The agreement aligns with President Trump’s executive order, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.” The Pentagon gave Scouting six months to demonstrate meaningful compliance. Hegseth was unambiguous: “Ideally, I believe the Boy Scouts should go back to being the Boy Scouts as originally founded — a group that develops boys into men.”

Scouting has long served as a reliable pipeline to the U.S. armed forces, with Eagle Scouts heavily represented in ROTC, service academies, and military leadership tracks at rates far exceeding the general population.

Meanwhile, roughly 77% of young Americans are currently ineligible for military service, with obesity as the single leading disqualifier. The U.S. Army fell 25% short of its 2022 recruitment goals, and that trend has not reversed.

RELATED: Why do state schools bankroll people who despise the state?

ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

An institution that once produced physically prepared, morally grounded young men willing to serve their country is not a luxury. It is a national security asset.

Scouting’s founding philosophy was never complicated. William D. Boyce chartered the Boy Scouts of America in 1910 after an unnamed Scout in fog-shrouded London refused a tip for guiding a lost American — because a Scout does not accept payment for a good turn.

Robert Baden-Powell’s Scouting model translated Aristotelian virtue ethics into an applied curriculum. Character, as Aristotle argued in the “Nicomachean Ethics,” is not innate — it is forged through repeated habit and deliberate challenge. One does not become courageous by reading about courage. One becomes courageous by building a fire in the rain, navigating by stars at 0200, and rappelling down a cliff face with a scoutmaster who has no interest in excuses.

The patrol method, rank advancement, merit badge requirements — the entire architecture is an applied Aristotelian curriculum. The national office spent a decade dismantling it in favor of ideological programming. The irony is almost too rich to catalog.

The membership figures tell the story no press release can obscure. Enrollment peaked at roughly 6.5 million in the early 1970s. By 2026, fewer than one million combined boys and girls remained enrolled. The 2020 bankruptcy filing, driven by sexual abuse claims, produced a $2.4 billion settlement compensating more than 82,000 claimants in 2023 — a catastrophic institutional failure that, to put it with considerable understatement, did not help recruitment.

The progression of policy changes is well documented: Gay youth membership opened in 2013; openly gay adult leaders followed in 2015; a 2017 case in New Jersey involving an 8-year-old opened transgender membership; girls entered Cub Scouts in 2018 and the flagship program in 2019. The 2025 rebrand to “Scouting America” completed the transformation — apparently because “Boy Scouts” contained the word “boy,” which had become inconvenient.

The “Citizenship in Society” merit badge, required for Eagle Scout rank, captured the broader problem with admirable brevity. The badge directed participants to “realize the benefits of diversity, equity, and inclusion” and practice “ethical leadership” through the lens of identity politics.

Think about that sequencing: instead of studying the Declaration of Independence, constitutional structure, or proper flag etiquette, Scouts were directed to contemplate microaggressions and systemic bias.

RELATED: Why America’s enemies always target Western civilization first

VCG Wilson/Corbis/Getty Images

As someone who earned merit badges in camping, first aid, and rifle shooting — skills that translated directly into my experience at Marine Corps OCS — the substitution struck me as roughly equivalent to replacing a wilderness survival course with a corporate HR seminar and then expressing genuine puzzlement at falling enrollment. The memorandum of understanding eliminates that badge effective immediately. Eagle Scout rank now requires 13 merit badges instead of 14.

The reforms are a start. The next step is enrollment. Parents with sons in the target age range should investigate local troops directly, ask hard questions about how the new biological sex policies are actually being implemented, not just acknowledged, and choose units that are executing the reforms in good faith rather than grudging compliance.

Adults with relevant skills should volunteer. The merit badge counselor system runs entirely on people with genuine expertise: navigation, wilderness medicine, marksmanship, engineering. If you served in uniform, your experience is directly applicable and badly needed.

Watching a hesitant 12-year-old master the bowline knot and then use it confidently three days later on a climbing wall is, I can report firsthand, among the more satisfying experiences available to a middle-aged man who has otherwise run out of things left to prove.

My father spent a decade building boys into men because he believed the mission mattered. I carried that conviction into my own service at summer camp. My son carried it all the way to West Point. The Scout motto, “Be prepared,” has never been more operationally relevant. These reforms restore a foundation. What gets built on it is up to us.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.