PJ Lifestyle » Paula Bolyard

5 Signs That We Haven’t Lost America Yet

Paula Bolyard — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:00:20 +0000

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again

Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock

Begin, Reagan, Palestine, Terror on the airline

Ayatollah’s in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan

Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide

Foreign debts, homeless Vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz

Hypodermics on the shore, China’s under martial law

Rock and Roll, cola wars, I can’t take it anymore

Billy Joel – “We Didn’t Start the Fire“

Benghazi, Boston bombings, the Gosnell trial, the Cleveland kidnappings, the IRS targeting conservatives, DOJ snooping on the AP, war games with Iran and North Korea, civil war in Syria…

Last week my ability to mentally process world events felt like a cell phone when the data is throttled — it was almost too much to wrap my mind around. Some days I fantasize about life as a low-information voter, not caring about anything more important than what some Kardashian is up to. Barring sudden brain malfunction, I’m not likely to experience that kind of apathy any time soon, and the fact that you’re reading PJ Media tells me that you’re likely in the same boat.

Instead of spending the weekend wallowing in all the terrible things happening in the country and around the world, I decided to instead consider many of the positive signs around us that all is not yet lost.

And so I bring you:

5 Signs That We Haven’t Lost America Yet:

Cleveland House of Horrors: Should Somebody Have Done Something?

Paula Bolyard — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:00:32 +0000

When news of a horrific crime like the Cleveland kidnappings and subsequent escape and rescue breaks, what follows is a media circus and 24-hour news cycle. It’s not unusual to hear reporters, in their quest to fill space and time, making vapid comments and asking extraordinarily dumb questions. We can always count on Piers “That’s Appalling” Morgan to add to the collective tomfoolery. On Friday night he asked a “man on the street” in Cleveland (in his most earnest, probing voice), “Is there a sense of collective guilt?”

Morgan was referring to all the people who certainly overlooked clues that something was terribly wrong at the house on Seymour Avenue in Cleveland. How could a man keep three young women imprisoned in his home for ten years without anyone noticing? Shouldn’t the neighbors have known that something ghastly was going on there and then done something about it? Shouldn’t service workers like meter readers and mail carriers have noticed signs that this wasn’t a normal home with one resident? And perhaps most disturbing, shouldn’t police have investigated alleged calls by neighbors who reported odd things they saw at the residence?

Somebody should have done something, right?

Evolving on Guns: My First Foray Into Gun Culture

Paula Bolyard — Mon, 06 May 2013 15:00:09 +0000

I’ve been writing about my evolution on guns since the Boston manhunt (see here and here). Last week I made my first foray into gun culture by getting my hands on some actual guns.

Once I made the decision to exercise my 2nd Amendment right to self-defense rather than to be a helpless victim, I began to research my options for home protection. I contacted friends who are qualified to dispense advice on the topic and I sent them emails with my requirements. I said I wanted a gun for home use (not for concealed carry at this point), one that is easy to load and shoot (and wouldn’t require me to be an expert marksman), and one for which ammo is readily available. They responded with helpful suggestions and all had a 12-gauge shotgun at the top of their lists. One said a 12-gauge pump shotgun is “ tried and true, easy to use, and ammo is plentiful.” Another said, “For home protection get a 12-gauge pump action shotgun. A Mossberg 500 or a Remington 870 are essentially the same weapon. 12-gauge 00 buckshot is still fairly cheap and plentiful. Anything you shoot at will be vaporized at close range.”

That sounded good, though the thought of “vaporized at close range” in my home was unnerving. Let’s not forget that until a few weeks ago my weapon of choice was a bug vacuum (don’t judge me, this is a process).

My friend and neighbor, Doug Deeken, who is on the board of Ohioans for Concealed Carry, sent me a detailed email with a list of handgun and long gun options. He also thought a shotgun might be a good choice for home use, but offered some cautions,

“Long guns are easier overall, and a bit safer for the user, but aren’t quite as easy to use in a hallway with that long barrel sticking out there. Personally, I have a pump-action Mossberg 500 12-gauge for my home defense gun. Unless you are familiar with the recoil of a 12-gauge you’d be well advised to look for either a 20-gauge or .410 gauge pump action shotgun. Either a Mossberg 500 or Remington 870 will work fine. Get a “Youth” or “Bantam” model, because it’ll have a shorter stock that is easier for you to hold correctly.”

When three out of three friends had shotguns at the top of their recommendation lists, I latched onto that idea and told my husband and son that I was leaning toward a shotgun. Ryan, my 21-year-old son, has many years of experience with a variety of guns (what happened at camp, stayed at camp — I didn’t want to know the scary details all those years). When I told him (via Facebook chat) about my plans to get a shotgun, he didn’t agree. Actually, “scoffed” might be a better word, but he tried to be gentle:

Evolving on Guns: Considering the Morality of Gun Ownership Now That I Refuse to Be a Victim

Paula Bolyard — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:00:24 +0000

Last week I wrote about my “evolution” on guns during the Boston manhunt:

In the middle of that night listening to the Boston police scanner, I evolved. I realized right then that if I were holed up in my house while a cold-blooded terrorist roamed my neighborhood, I wouldn’t want to be a sitting duck with only a deadbolt lock between me and an armed intruder. There are not enough police and they cannot come to my rescue quickly enough. They carry guns to protect themselves, not me. I knew at that instant if Dzhokhar Tsarnaev showed up at my door while I was “sheltered-in-place” and aimed a gun at my head and only one of us would live, I could pull the trigger.

Once I made the decision that I would not be a victim, I began to research my options for home protection. I plan to share the experience of choosing my first gun in a future post but first I’d like to deal with some of the moral implications of the decision to purchase, own — and potentially use — a gun.

I wrote about one of the reasons I refrained from owning a gun for many years:

The other thing holding me back was my belief that if you’re going to own a gun, you must be willing to shoot to kill…I searched my heart and realized that in the heat of the moment of an attack, I wasn’t sure what I would do with a gun in my hand. I knew that could be more dangerous than being unarmed; it wasn’t worth the risk.

A gun is an inanimate object and as such is morally neutral. Lying on a table, tucked under a mattress, or locked in a gun safe it cannot kill, inflict harm, or protect its owner. However, the fact that a gun is in one’s home creates the potential for both danger and protection depending on many variables, including the training, skill, and temperament of the residents of the home and the mental capacity and willingness of the gun owners to use the weapon, whether in self-defense or to inflict intentional harm.

While I understand that many who grew up around guns accept them as a normal part of life, for me, it’s a decision that requires serious introspection and moral evaluation. Though I passionately support the Second Amendment, I confess that I had never taken the time to earnestly contemplate its practical applications. Perhaps this is because I’ve mostly lived in safe, virtually crime-free neighborhoods and have never experienced violent crime. Whatever the reason, it’s not an excuse to jump into gun ownership without first embarking on this intellectual exercise.

How I Evolved on Guns During the #BostonPoliceScanner Manhunt

Paula Bolyard — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:00:01 +0000

In the wee hours of Friday morning, April 19th, I evolved on guns.

First, a confession: I’ve never owned a gun. I never wanted one in my home and, like a lot of moms, I wanted to raise non-violent children and thought keeping guns out of our home was one way to do that. When my kids were young, I didn’t want them to play with toy guns — in fact, I was rather insistent about it. Eventually, I realized that little boys will make guns out of just about anything — bananas, sticks, the dog’s paw, their fingers — nothing is safe from their imaginative minds. So I compromised and allowed squirt guns and non-gun-looking Nerf guns, but nothing that resembled a “real” gun.

My sensible (ex-military) husband indulged me in this when they were toddlers, but as they grew, he convinced me that our boys needed to learn firearms safety. He took them to firing ranges where they learned to fire weapons and even to enjoy them. Our 21 year old couldn’t wait to get his concealed-carry permit the minute he reached the legal age. I’m thankful now for my husband’s insistence that our children not be raised to fear guns.

But I never wanted a gun in my home.

It probably goes back to my childhood. My dad always kept a shotgun in the bedroom closet, along with the ammo on the top shelf. He used it for his twice-a-year hunting trip with my mom’s brothers. As a bleeding-heart animal lover from a young age, it always pained me to see skinned bunnies and squirrels on the kitchen counter. So I have some “issues” — when I saw the gun in my dad’s closet my mind went to dead bunnies. And somewhere along the way (I don’t remember a specific conversation, but he had a way of doing this), my dad put the fear of God in me about touching that shotgun. The year my brother and I peeked at our Christmas gifts hidden behind the shotgun, I was terrified the thing would go off. I never, ever touched it. Not even once.

I realize it’s a completely irrational fear and in some ways I’ve always felt it was a betrayal of my strong support for the 2nd Amendment. Last year I dipped my toe in the water and experienced shooting for the first time. I enjoyed a trip to the Hillsdale College shooting range during Parents Weekend and it turns out I’m not a bad shot. Friends never understood why I didn’t own a gun and some urged me to purchase one for my protection. But still I hesitated because of my discomfort at having one in my home.

Can the Left and Right Find Common Ground on Common Core and High-Stakes Testing?

Paula Bolyard — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 21:30:18 +0000

I recently wrote about an event called Occupy the DOE, where many of the speakers espoused radical views on education and society. While I disagreed with the extreme left-wing views of many of the speakers, I didn’t disagree with everything said during the 4-day event. In fact, several times I had to remind myself that I wasn’t listening to a Tea Party event or homeschool conference as speaker after speaker railed against high-stakes testing and the Common Core.

Parents and activists from across the political spectrum object to excessive testing and the implementation of Common Core in their states; there is much common ground to be found. But it’s important to dig beneath the surface and consider exactly what you’re signing up for when you join a movement to eliminate high-stakes testing or block the Common Core. Some groups have more than just the best interest of your child as their top priority and you may inadvertently be drafted into the public school monopoly-protection movement.

A group called “United Opt Out” organized the Occupy the DOE event in front of the Department of Education in April. Their mission statement claims that they are “dedicated to the elimination of high stakes testing in public education,” saying that high stakes testing is

destructive to ALL children, educators, communities, the quality of instruction in classrooms, equity in schooling, and the democratic principles which underlie the purposes of public education.

There is a lot to unpack in that statement, but hyperbole aside, many parents whose children attend public school do have legitimate complaints about high-stakes testing and its negative influence on education. In fact, the testing culture is sometimes cited as a reason parents remove their children from public schools for homeschooling or private schools. As states march forward with the implementation of the Common Core standards, teachers, parents and even many unions fear that schools will double-down on the worst aspects of the testing culture and lose even more local control, so in many aspects, parents and activists on both side of the political spectrum can find areas of agreement.

Timothy Slekar, a former teacher, is now an associate professor of teacher education at Penn State Altoona. At the Occupy the DOE rally he described a parent-teacher conference where he and his wife were told that their son had failed a writing test because of a technicality. They felt that the formulaic requirements of the writing test were stifling their son’s creativity and they decided then to opt out of all future high-stakes testing for their son. “This disastrous system was forcing his teachers to comply with the powers that be.” He said,

The [tests] were forcing Luke to parrot sentences in a pre-ordained structure so that a low-paid temp worker would be able to score it. … Our son was not going to take part in a system that forced the teachers to comply with educational mandates constructed by politicians. … We were opting out.

When Radical Teachers Occupy the Department of Education

Paula Bolyard — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 17:00:30 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Did you happen to catch “Occupy the D.O.E. 2.0” at the Department of Education over the weekend? If you missed it, you’re not alone. It didn’t receive quite the attention some of the other Occupy events have received and it was only an “Occupy” event if by “Occupy” you mean people congregating in soccer-mom chairs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. (with an hour break for lunch) and evening entertainment at Busboys & Poets at 5th and K Street. And hotels at night.

The Thursday-Sunday event was sponsored by United Opt Out, a group whose main mission is to convince teachers and families to opt out of high-stakes testing and to “resist all market-based reforms that seek to privatize and destroy public education.” The lineup of speakers included a collection of academic elites, union leaders, community organizers, teachers, and students. They only managed to attract a few dozen activists, which is why you probably didn’t see much about it on the news. But it’s important to hear what they had to say because these leaders in the education movement will have an important voice in shaping the schools many of our children and grandchildren will attend in the future.

While the speakers who were associated with United Opt Out were on-message, documenting their complaints about standardized testing and the corporate interests pushing the Common Core, other speakers attempted to work this message into their standard stump speeches and this is where it seemed to merge with your typical Occupy rally: There were dozens of different complaints and few (if any) solutions proposed.

As you might expect at a faculty lounge Occupation, there was plenty of radical rhetoric and Utopian vision-casting. (Most of the livestreamed videos are archived here, and you can read the speaker bios here.)

Shaun Johnson is a former public school teacher and online radio show host at the Chalk Face. He thinks teachers are too “meek” and need to get angry:

It’s finally about time that we start getting pissed off and angry…Nothing’s going to change unless people start cracking some skulls. I’m sorry, so, if you don’t get angry and go out there and start speaking out and not be so afraid, then nothing’s going to change. Because there’s a lot of money out there working against us. And we don’t have that kind of money. We don’t have that kind of political power. So we’ve gotta do something. Throw our bodies on the machine. But something’s gotta change. Something’s gotta give. And like I said, we’ve gotta start cracking some skulls.

It might be a good time to point out that they actually do have “that kind of money.” The NEA was the top contributor to state and federal races in 2008, with $45 million, more than 90% going to Democrats. And that doesn’t include tens of millions the teachers’ unions spend on political activity that is reported to the Department of Labor and doesn’t show up on campaign finance reports.

Johnson also led the crowd in a profanity-laced guessing game about the names of charter schools. He implied that kids using at-home charter schools are spending their days engaged in cybersex. “What are you doing with your hands?”

Should Parents Take Over Failing Schools?

Paula Bolyard — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:00:20 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Should parents take over failing schools? Currently, seven states have “parent-trigger” laws, which empower parents to take control of the fate of low-performing schools their children attend. Depending on the state, parents can vote for various options when schools are failing their children: They can vote to convert to a charter school, replace teachers and administrators, have the state take over the school, or even close the school altogether.

Last year’s movie Won’t Back Down, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis, told the story of a group of parents who took over their children’s failing school. “Inspired by true events,” it illustrated with heartbreaking clarity the frustrations parents—and often teachers— feel when children become lost in bureaucracies and schools where it seems rigor mortis has set in. Not surprisingly, the movie was panned by unions and other anti-school choice activists.

In California, the only place parents have actually pulled the trigger on a “Parent Empowerment” law, it has been tried twice. The first attempt was the Compton Unified School District, where fewer than half of students graduate from high school and just 2% attend college. Under the California law, parents can use the trigger law if a district has failed to meet adequate yearly progress three years in a row and is in “corrective action” status under the federal No Child Left Behind law. It seems like a no-brainer that a major overhaul was in order, but it will surprise no one that when Compton parents organized to call for change, the unions and administration objected. Strenuously. They promised that reforms were right around the corner and that they just needed a little more time for their programs to work. It’s understandable that parents grew tired of waiting for promised reforms that might never come while their children languished in lousy schools.

In order for parents to take control of a school, they must file a petition with signatures from 50% of the parents of each targeted school. Parents chose to try out the California law on McKinley Elementary School, ranked in the bottom 10% of schools in the state. They turned in signatures from 62% of parents in the district and that’s when the claws came out. The school district demanded that parents verify their signatures in person and—I am not making this up—that parents show photo identification. Some parents claimed the schools threatened them with deportation, and others said teachers told children the school would be closed or the kids wouldn’t receive special education services if the parents succeeded. Some parents rescinded their signatures. Board members claimed “outside groups” pressured the parents to sign the petition. Leaders of the trigger movement dispute that claim, as does the state school board president. The board also said the petition was “materially non-qualifying” and rejected it on a technicality with a 7-0 vote, saying it cited the wrong education code and didn’t contain correct information about the charter school operator they had selected. Despite pro bono legal help, parents failed in their bid to reform the school.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Has a Century of Progressive Education Turned Us into Obedient Sheep?

Paula Bolyard — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 17:30:43 +0000

Something vile and horrific happened in a courtroom in Ohio last week, and as I’ve reflected upon the event, I’ve been disturbed by the thought that we have become a nation of compliant sheep that no longer produces citizens capable of standing up to injustice.

At a sentencing hearing for school shooter T.J. Lane, who gunned down six high school students, killing three and paralyzing one from the chest down, Judge David Fuhry gave Lane three life sentences in prison, to be served consecutively.

In what should have been a day of closure and justice for the families of the victims and the community of Chardon that suffered so much in the wake of the school shooting last year, a courtroom full of people stood by and allowed T.J. Lane to victimize the families in a base, contemptible way that likely added exponentially to the heavy burden the families already bear.

The courtroom for Lane’s sentencing hearing on Tuesday was packed with families of the victims, students, teachers, and members of the media. As the hearing began, Lane slipped off the button-down shirt he was wearing, revealing a t-shirt onto which he had written “KILLER” with a marker. A collective gasp filled the courtroom. As the families of the victims gave their statements, Lane smiled and leered at the families, almost seeming to enjoy the moment.

After the sentence was read, Lane had the opportunity to make a statement. At that point, he said something so horrific that I’m not even going to write it here, simply to spare you if you haven’t already heard it. (You can read it and watch the video here.) Trust me, you will have to bleach your soul once you hear it. It should be added to The Book of Things That Shall Never Be Repeated. Then Lane flipped the families the middle finger as a parting shot and said, “F*** all of you!” As a mother, I had a visceral — almost physical — reaction. I almost vomited, thinking about the pain his contemptible words caused the families and how they’ll never be able to scrub them from their minds.

People called talk-radio programs that day to vent their anger. Along with vicious prison-retribution wishes, caller after caller said they would have been arrested had they been in the courtroom. They wouldn’t have stood by while Lane visually and verbally tortured the parents.

WTAM host Bob Frantz said: “I would have been shot dead today. I would have leapt tables to get to that kid.”

And yet.

Everyone stood by and let it happen.

A Parent Guide to Teachers’ Unions

Paula Bolyard — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 20:00:28 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Action is for mass salvation. He who sacrifices the mass good for his personal conscience has a peculiar conception of ‘personal salvation’; he doesn’t care enough for people to be ‘corrupted’ for them.” — Saul Alinsky

“The hell with charity. The only thing you’ll get is what you’re strong enough to get.” — Saul Alinsky

Parents rightly admire and appreciate their children’s teachers, but they don’t always understand the radical labor organizations running the plays behind the scenes in negotiations with their local school boards. Unfortunately, beloved teachers sometimes get caught up in the guerrilla tactics championed by Saul Alinsky and other radical community organizers.

Alinsky, considered the founder of the modern community-organizing movement, is in many ways the leader of modern-day teachers’ unions. His 1971 book Rules for Radicals has influenced negotiations between unions and school boards for 40 years, and whether parents realize it or not, their communities have often been at the mercy of his radical organizing methods. Alinsky’s main goal was to strip power from the “haves” and give it to the “have nots” based on his notion of fairness and social justice.

Gaining power is a zero-sum game in Rules for Radicals. Either you have it or you don’t. If you don’t have it all, you must continue to work until you do, using whatever means available to you, while maintaining the illusion of the moral high ground. “You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments,” Alinsky said. More:

It is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; a world where we are always moral and our enemies always immoral; a world where “reconciliation” means that when one side gets the power and the other side gets reconciled to it, then we have reconciliation.

Until his death in 1972, Alinsky conducted training for NEA UniServ personnel. Ten years later, during a strike in Ravenna, Ohio, that dragged on for five long months (the longest in the state’s history), strike manuals were found titled “Strategy Uniserv Directors” that outlined the Alinsky-style program for negotiations. The same strategies are still in use today.