While other male role models offer boys rules for life and other important motivation, Charlie Kirk gave his listeners something eternal.
BY: PAULA RINEHART
In the grief surrounding the assassination of Charlie Kirk, one underappreciated aspect is the loss for young men of a role model they could enthusiastically follow. Reels of Kirk’s talks on college campuses show crowds of young male faces. Indeed, young men were Kirk’s base of support, and for good reason.
After two decades of pathologizing masculinity, a young man appeared on the college scene, the belly of the beast, with no apology for being a man. Who in recent memory has so winsomely called on young guys to “man up?” Live a life worthy of respect. Get married. Be a good father. Above all, love Christ. That was Kirk’s consistent message.
And, more importantly, how can we stop it?
To hear our politicians and pundits—left, right, and center—tell it, the shooting occurred in a politically charged climate, committed by some coward who chose to end the debate with a bullet. Toss in some lip service to mental health and the obligatory lip-pursing about gun violence, and you have the consensus vision of what went wrong. And it’s a strangely comforting one at that, because it casts the shooter as a horror movie monster, terrifying but singular in its ghoulishness, the one meanie who emerged from the toxic swamp of bad but curable social phenomena. All you have to do, then, is find him, catch him, deter others from getting any crazy ideas, and our long national nightmare will be over.
But the nightmare, sadly, is far greater than that . . .
AB 495 dangerously redefines guardianship, stripping away parental rights By Katy Grimes, September 2, 2025 9:59 am
Assembly Bill 495, the bill which threatens parental rights by allowing the state to remove custody from parents who do not “affirm their child’s gender identity,” was moved off of the suspense file by Senate Democrats, after being placed on the suspense file August 18th.
Urge Senator McGuire (or your senator) to vote NO on AB 495 HERE
As President Donald J. Trump celebrates 200 days in office, the winning is never-ending — and if his first 100 days were historic, his second set was equally as impressive. From securing unprecedented trade deals and locking in massive investments to unleashing American energy dominance and ending woke culture, President Trump has accomplished more in his first 200 days than most administrations do over an entire term — and the best is yet to come.
President Trump made good on even more of his promises between Day 100 and Day 200:
The Trump administration is unrolling a new initiative Thursday that will help prevent noncitizens from voting in U.S. elections, a high-priority policy for the White House.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is updating the the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program and partnering with the Social Security Administration in order to ensure “a single, reliable source for verifying immigration status and U.S. citizenship,” according to a memo exclusively shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. Under the update, state and local officials will be able to input Social Security numbers for verification of U.S. citizenship and thereby prevent foreign nationals from voting in American elections.
“For years, states have pleaded for tools to help identify and stop aliens from hijacking our elections,” USCIS Spokesman Matthew Tragesser said in a statement provided to the DCNF.
By Anne Doherty
Study after study—like the 2004 Bureau of Justice Statistics finding that 70% of incarcerated juveniles came from disrupted homes, or the 2016 University of Pennsylvania link between family instability and violent crime—show strong families are a bulwark against chaos. But in an age where we can’t even agree on what ‘family’ means, how do we harness that power?
In creating the Family Month Project, I have found that people are touchy about the definition of family. People are afraid to define it. In order to fine-tune my own definition, I've sent around a definition to friends. One woman with three children and six grandchildren told me her stomach knotted up when she even thought about the definition. And yet intuitively everyone knows they have one. We all have a biological mother and father, for example, even if we have never met them. We have people who raised us from an infant. Even if we didn't grow up to like those people, they fed us, dressed us, and put a roof over our heads. We know they did this because infants can't take care of themselves.
The reason that people are so frightened of the definition, I think, is pretty obvious. Science, technology, and modern medicine have changed our relationship to our bodies and our perception of ourselves in society. Whether we're talking about women’s rights, disposable diapers, IVF, or even phones so smart we can run businesses from them, we have so much freedom we don't know what to do with it. Compared to our ancestors, we can be anything we want to be. Anything. The extremes of personal evolution don’t mesh easily with the traditional idea that a family consists of a mom, a dad, and 2.5 heathy kids who live happily ever after in a neat suburban house.
But when did such ideal families ever exist? They didn't. Before World War II, in a world with no antibiotics or other medical advancements, families were lucky if all their children lived to adulthood. Wives were lucky if they weren't widowed young, as my grandmother was. Husbands were lucky if their wives didn't die in childbirth or from the flu or an abscessed tooth for that matter. During the depression, some children were put in orphanages if their parents couldn't support them. Life was hard. So after the war, when prosperity hit America, people tried to build a better world, The way they all began was by having a family. There's just something inside most human beings that tells them a family matters more than anything. All we have to do, at the dawn of this great technological age, is remember what makes us human and treasure it.
My definition of family is still evolving, but here’s where I’ve landed: It’s a messy, unbreakable unit—forged by blood, law, or love—that shapes who we are and holds society together. It’s not always warm or easy; some ties hurt, some fade, but they all matter. Because once formed, a family is forever—and that’s the human thread we can’t afford to lose.
Anne Nygren Doherty is the founder of the Family Month Project, advocating for the celebration of family origins between Mother's Day and Father's Day to strengthen family bonds and honor personal histories.
Please sign the petition HERE to establish an annual national Family Month.
