I’ve spent the better part of this weekend having flashbacks to various periods of my life. I’m not sure why this has been happening, other than just being a little melancholy for my youth and having too many things trigger my memory in a short period of time.

But on this Sunday morning, I’ve come across the odd convergence of facts that have led me to think about the death of the American dream. That utopian vision that our nation once fostered, which promised us all an equal share of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If we were just willing to work hard enough, sacrifice our independence enough, pay our fair share enough, and just be lucky enough–we would be rewarded with the life that the 1960s characters of TV’s “Mad Men” seem to be permanently preserved in.

Alas, the rest of us have seemingly passed by that dream, on the freeway to the far less utopian reality of the 21st century America we now live in. One not captured in those many Norman Rockwell paintings.

With homage to writer Rod Sterling intended, I present for your approval this week’s latest example of this withering of our collective hopes, with the news that the Boy Scouts of America have lost a court case that will cost the organization some $18.5 million dollars. This for an all-too familiar scandal in which a scout leader sexually molested 17 scouts and the organization did nothing to stop this predator from shattering young lives. During the case it was revelaed that the national office of the Boy Scouts apparently keeps a list of those who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the impressionable young men that the organization was chartered to bring together and help towards adulthood.

That fact that such a list even exists is exhibit one that the American dream may well be on life support.

I was a Boy Scout, a member of Troop 466 in the Coastal Carolina Council of the Boy Scouts of America, for those formative years of my life between 12 and 16 years of age. I reached the rank of Life Scout, that being just below the highest rank of Eagle Scout and during my years with the scouts learned so many things that I can’t begin to remember them all. Most of what I learned was about the taking of those beginning and tentative steps towards independence that I would complete in the latter part of my teenage years. The scouts taught me the larger lessons like teamwork, honor, and service. But perhaps more importantly, I also learned much about myself during my scouting years, in how to be on my own (if only for a week or two) at summer camp. In how to conquer my fear by sleeping in the woods with nothing but a sleeping bag to protect me from the wilderness. In learning how to shoot a rifle or a bow and arrow, and not maiming myself in the process.

The Boy Scouts was the place where I, and so many other young men, learned those things that our Mothers would have never allowed–had they known all of the details. In those stupid uniforms and neckerchiefs, we actually got to act more like men, if for ever so brief a period of time.

But in that proverbial blink of an eye, scouting was replaced as a key part of the teenage years. Earning merit badges gave way to getting a driver’s license. Fellowship gave way to courtship, and girls became more important than…well, just about anything else.

Scouting’s brief phase of importance in my life was over as quickly as it began. But its impact was long felt, and I’m sure much like those devout Catholics whose faith has been shaken to the core by the sex scandals that have rocked the church, I am more than sad to learn that the Boy Scouts are far from untouched by those who do not understand that robbing the innocence of children is the most heinous kind of theft that can be committed.

Of course, like the church, the Scouts themselves are to blame for not trying to keep up with the times and acknowledge that we live in a time where one size definitely does not fit all, and the acceptance of some new thinking–particularly when it comes to those who we will accept in our ranks–must be considered. Scouting in my day didn’t have to figure out how to accept some of the things that it now must. Author Paul Theroux makes the compelling case for this in an excellent opinion piece he wrote for the New York Times.

If you think about it for a moment, this is the kind of cold water reality that gets thrown on our American dream each day. It is a daily fountain of anger and outrage, sprayed forth by the Tea Partiers, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, Frank Luntz, and like minded malcontents, robbed of the their ultimate version of America, and thus feeling the need to demonize anyone who might be described as liberal, progressive or heaven forbid–free thinking in the least.

Because oddly enough, hidden in the Boy Scout experience that I had, deep amongst the outer trappings of being in a collective and wanting to be accepted by a group, was another key component of the American dream:

The desire to think and act for myself. To “Be Prepared” for just about anything.

Hopefully, the best parts of Scouting–and our American Dream–can be saved for future generations to have that same coming of age experience.