Texas Governor Rick Perry spends lots of time in the ornate halls of the State House in Austin. But dust from the West Texas plains makes up part of his DNA. He lives and governs by values learned from his childhood community of Paint Creek and instilled by Boy Scout Troop 48 and his late scoutmaster Gene Overton. 

 In his book, On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For (Stroud & Hall, 2008), the Eagle Scout takes on attackers of this most conservative of American institutions. 

“I wrote the book for two main reasons: to espouse the virtues of a movement that has positively shaped the lives of millions of young men and to expose the virus of secularism that endangers institutions that teach traditional values,” he says.

Part political treatise, taking on the American Civil Liberties Union and others who find fault with scouting traditions, and part memoir, Perry's engaging book begins in Paint Creek, or “paradise” as he remembers it. There, he had a dog, a pony and room to roam. When he discovered scouting, its values seemed to him to align with all things good and right about America and its heritage.

“Scouting has planted the values of our founding fathers in the next generation,” Perry says, going on to quote the Scout Law. “By teaching young men to be ‘Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean and Reverent,’ we are preparing them to become good men and good Americans.”

With talk of another run for governor in 2010, Perry's not planning on leaving the State House any time soon. He hopes scouting lasts even longer than his political career.

“The philosophy and creed of the Boy Scouts of America has worked for nearly a century, and if we continue to let this organization be, it’ll work for another 100 years,” Perry says.