In “On My Honor”, Texas Governor Rick Perry takes dead aim at the secular humanist movement, and their agenda of moral relativism, for its corrosive impact on the culture. Examining the left’s legal assaults on the Boy Scouts of America – which spans more than 30 years – Perry offers prescient insight into one front in this multi-faceted war which pits the proponents of traditional American values against the radical leftist movement that seeks to tear down our social foundations.
In his book, Perry seeks out the views of notable American leaders who, like himself, are Eagle Scouts. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Senator Thad Cochran, astronaut James Lovell, Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee, and former FBI Director William Sessions all comment on the values instilled by scouting, and its relevancy in the 21st Century. He also has enlisted former presidential candidate Ross Perot to write the foreword.
Perry draws from his roots in Paint Creek – a small community an hour north of Abilene, Texas – where scouting played a central role in shaping young boys into men. You see a young man who doesn’t know what he aspires to be, but who knows based on scouting and family tradition that service to others is an honorable calling; you see how scouting instills confidence based on achievement rather than the left’s artificial attempts to boost self-esteem; and you see that the values scouting derives from the great middle class of America remain as important today as they did prior to the counter-culture movement spawned out of the turmoil of the 1960′s.
Perry looks at the public record regarding the left’s challenge to scouting’s profession of duty to God, its attempt to force scouting to conform to the homosexual agenda, and the harm caused by the left’s litigious assault on an organization with limited resources. Perry also reveals that the infamous Dale case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000, affirming scouting’s prerogative as a private organization to ban openly gay scoutmasters, is not the final word on the subject: the left has simply shifted its tactics and has begun pressuring schools, municipalities and other public entities that provide space to scouting organizations.
“On My Honor” underscores the depth to which the culture warriors of the left will go to force their secular humanist, minority view upon American society and revered American institutions. It is a revealing look at a culture war that rages close to the surface of American life, and it is a must read for any American concerned that our society is slipping from the high moral ground of liberty to the valley of license.
