A heartening speech to some Boy Scouts by Defense Secretary Robert Gates takes an unexpectedly dark turn:

We live in an America today where the young are increasingly physically unfit and society as a whole languishes in ignoble moral ease. An America where in public and private life we see daily what the famous news columnist Walter Lippman once called “the disaster of the character of men…the catastrophe of the soul.”

But not in scouting. At a time when many American young people are turning into couch potatoes, and too often much worse, scouting continues to challenge boys and young men, preparing you for leadership.

My own scouting experience was corny, unpleasant and brief, though I suppose that’s how I became the man of low moral character who blogs before you today.