The family that showed America what moral clarity looks like



Charlie Kirk’s alleged murderer came from somewhere. We all do.

Since the “In the beginning” times, our species has wrestled with the fundamental logic — and perceived unfairness — of holding parents responsible for the sins of their children. Or the other way around. In the Old Testament book of Ezekiel, the prophet makes this explicit:

The person who sins will die. A son will not suffer the punishment for the father’s guilt, nor will a father suffer the punishment for the son’s guilt; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself. (Ezekiel 18:20)

Yet, we mortals struggle with this idea. It’s a matter of self-preservation. The unifying idea is that we must bear some responsibility for the behavior of our own kids. Our kids are reflections of us because we put our stamp on them. Functional societies have a justifiable fear of the ripple effects of other people’s bad parenting.

What this family confronted deserves to be noticed, praised, and modeled.

Healthy families are civilization’s frontline schoolhouse of needed humans — producers of good men, women, and citizens. Bad parents can easily replicate themselves and often do. It is a rare and beautiful testament to the enduring nature of the good to see exceptions to the rule.

The inverse happens, too. I have met many good parents of bad kids — a bad seed that grows up to be a bad adult. Or a good kid who leaves the home for school, falls in with the wrong crowd, and rejects root and branch the ways of his family.

Modern parents know that at some point, we must let our offspring venture into a hard and secular world outside the home threshold, a world that undermines good parenting at every turn. A school system that inverts the established, time-tested ways for purposes of political indoctrination. A culture that has lost any sense of moral and natural limits. An algorithmic media that is set on setting people into warring tribes with desensitized, brutish ways.

Good soil, infected fruit

Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin was born and raised in Southwestern Utah — Mormon territory. He was the son of a mother and father who raised their kids in the Mormon way, which produces exemplary fruits that are missionaries to the world. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — its formal name — instills family loyalty, stewardship, tolerance, sobriety, hard work, and sharing. Members tithe. They contribute. They are impressive people.

Even Matt Stone and Trey Parker, with their “Dumb, Dumb, Dumb” view of the Mormon religion (which is a cutout for all organized religion), recognized that Mormons have strong families and raise very good kids. The whole “Book of Mormon” craze began with a 2003 “South Park” episode featuring an impressive Mormon high school kid. His ending soliloquy put it best:

Look, maybe us Mormons do believe in crazy stories that make absolutely no sense, and maybe Joseph Smith did make it all up. But I have a great life and a great family, and I have the Book of Mormon to thank for that.

The truth is, I don’t care if Joseph Smith made it all up, because what the church teaches now is loving your family, being nice, and helping people.

I don’t know about you, but I admire the old-school way the accused killer’s father brought his son — his own flesh and blood — to face justice.

Would you have done the same?

The family saw the fruit of their loins on video surveillance in a national all-points bulletin. The family reached out to their own. Father and grandfather. They talked him into coming home. Once he was home, they convinced him to turn himself in for the crime — and to stanch the dishonor that he had done to his family’s name.

Would Luigi Mangione’s wealthy and well-connected Maryland family have done the same if they recognized his distinctive eyebrows? “Come home, son,” followed by, “You must turn yourself in to the authorities and be held accountable.” There’s no evidence they did anything of the kind. If they had, would Luigi have complied? I doubt it.

Fathers and mothers of America: Do you think you and yours could do similarly? To ask that question is not to answer it easily.

This Utah family has a quiet dignity to it. Their creed was not an assassin’s creed. Their kid is certainly a lost young man. He took a path outside of his family’s way, but his family retained a line of communication and influence over their prodigal son. They lost their son to dark, demonic forces, but appealed to the light remaining in him and brought him home and to justice.

What this family confronted deserves to be noticed, praised, and modeled. Our country was given clarity in real time. We very rarely get that. This young man did not come in lawyered up and with his phone locked and encrypted.

RELATED: Here's what we know about Tyler Robinson, the man accused of assassinating Charlie Kirk

Photo by Office of the Governor of Utah via Getty Images

A reeling nation did not have to suffer the indignity of mushroom management, where “We the People” are kept in the legalese dark and fed legalese doggerel.

Every family that has successfully raised a good kid to adulthood knows how hard it is in our present educational, cultural, and social media bathhouses.

A family in need of prayer

A family can hold a line, and a kid can transgress it. Once upon a time, the family had educational and cultural support systems that checked transgression and bolstered parents and kids. Kids heard a shared common and civilized creed in and outside the house. That cord has been cut for a while, and our families and nation are suffering at scale because of it.

This family summoned their prodigal son home. While we rightfully think of their son as a moral monster, they still had a familial claim and power over him. And with it, they brought him home and then to justice.

This family gave another grieving family and a nation the closure it needed. We owe them our thanks and compassion for displaying moral courage when it counted. The sins of their son are not theirs. They ought to be seen by the nation as neighbors in good standing. They need and deserve our parental prayers.

Under present grooming circumstances, there but for the grace of God go all of us.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

Why The Lost Boys Need More Charlie Kirks And Fewer Jordan Petersons

While other male role models offer boys rules for life and other important motivation, Charlie Kirk gave his listeners something eternal.

Can Erika Kirk’s Influence Help Women To ‘Woman Up?’

As Erika Kirk takes the helm at Turning Point, many have suggested she could do for young women what her husband has done for young men.

For Children, Surrogacy Always Creates A Deep, Gaping Hole Where A Mother Should Be

Like a sapling wounded early, my life bent and grew around the gaping wound of abandonment. It became a part of me.

In Small-Town Michigan, True American Values Are As Strong As Ever

The world feels fragile in many ways, but in this small lakeshore town, I am reminded that such work begins at the most local level.

No One Is Talking About The Direct Pipeline From Divorced Parents To School Shooters

Like so many other school shooters, the Minneapolis shooter's parents divorced in 2013, when we was around age 12.

I Lost My Freedom, Money, And Guns Based On No Evidence And With No Chance To Defend Myself

When accusation becomes law, fatherhood becomes a crime.

The day Ulta tried to steal my job as a dad



Every parent braces for certain awkward but necessary conversations. The “birds and the bees” talk has long been the gold standard — a dreaded rite of passage. You put it off, swallow hard, and finally sit down to answer your kid’s questions without squirming too much. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s also sacred. That talk belongs to parents — not to culture, not to corporations, and certainly not to a marketing executive at Ulta Beauty.

But thanks to Ulta, I had a different conversation recently — one I never saw coming, and definitely not before we’d covered the birds and the bees.

It’s time to remind corporations: You may sell products, but you don’t get to sell souls — especially not our children’s.

I was watching news coverage of Ulta’s latest ad campaign when my preteen daughter walked into the room. She’s just developing an interest in makeup and skin care, so she stopped to watch. Excited interest turned to confusion.

“Daddy,” she asked, “why is that man in a dress?”

That moment was not in my parenting playbook. It didn’t come from a question at church, a talk with her mom, or an overheard comment from an older sibling. It came from a cosmetics company that used to focus on blush and lip gloss but now pushes gender ideology.

What made it worse was her age. My daughter is 10 — right on the edge of girlhood and young womanhood. As I look forward to teaching my sons to shave one day, my wife cherishes the bond of teaching our daughter to apply a little makeup like Mommy: a touch of lip gloss, a dab of blush. It’s about dignity, not performance. Self-care, not spectacle. Those moments have been quiet lessons in self-respect.

Then Ulta barged in with a campaign that turned that rite of passage into a political statement. The timing, the tone, and the topic were no longer mine to decide. That’s the heart of the issue.

The left mocks parents who warn they’re “coming for our kids.” But they’ve already arrived — and they’re bypassing us entirely.

Ulta is just the latest brand to treat womanhood as a marketing gimmick. The company has joined Bud Light, Target, and far too many others in pushing gender ideology not just as an option but as a virtue to be celebrated. Now it’s stunning and brave for a man to dress as a woman to sell eyeliner to our daughters.

For generations, makeup helped women embrace femininity, express beauty, and boost confidence. Ulta didn’t just hijack that tradition — it erased it. The company replaced women with men in costumes, turning the beauty aisle into a battleground for ideological performance art.

Worse, Ulta disrupted the slow, intentional process parents follow to teach their daughters about dignity, modesty, and authentic femininity. Being a woman is not a costume or an act — it’s inherent, worthy, and profoundly meaningful.

In our home, makeup is a subtle tool, not a mask. It’s meant to refine, not transform. I want my daughter to understand that true beauty starts within and that femininity is strong, graceful, and rooted in truth.

This isn’t about hating anyone or debating gender theory. It’s about parental autonomy — our God-given, biologically affirmed, and constitutionally protected right to decide when and how our children learn about adult topics. We expect to teach them about sex, life, and morality — not to have those lessons ambushed by a YouTube ad or a store display.

A decade ago, the hardest talk I expected was the birds and the bees — rooted in reality, biology, and responsibility. Now parents are forced to explain gender identity, cross-dressing, and surgery on minors before we’ve explained where babies come from. We’re no longer the gatekeepers of our children’s innocence — we’re cast as obstacles to their “authenticity.”

This isn’t progress. It’s cultural colonization.

RELATED: ‘Queer Eye’ star celebrates Ulta Beauty collab by making a mockery of women

Blaze News Illustration

And it’s everywhere — school curricula, library displays, streaming specials, toy aisles. Ten years ago, parents couldn’t imagine explaining “preferred pronouns” to a third-grader. Now, if we don’t, someone else will.

The woke mob cleverly rebranded indoctrination as inclusion. They tell us our kids need “exposure,” but they really mean submission. Refuse, and you risk social isolation, bullying, or being labeled a bigot — for believing men are men, women are women, and parents should shape their children’s moral formation.

I didn’t sign up for a cultural hostage situation. I signed up to be a dad — to shield my daughter’s innocence until she’s ready for the truth. These conversations are too important to be rushed by a marketing department chasing diversity quotas.

Ulta didn’t just sell mascara that day. Ulta sold out parents — and sold out women.

But here’s the unexpected part. After the awkwardness passed and the questions came, we talked about how some people struggle with who they are. We talked about a broken world and how people search for answers in the wrong places. We talked about compassion — not compromise. About loving people without lying to them. About truth delivered with grace.

Yes, Ulta forced a conversation I wasn’t ready to have. But it reminded me my daughter is watching — not just what I say, but how I say it. She’s watching me model manhood. She’s watching how I treat people, even those I disagree with. She’s watching how I protect her — and how I pray for the lost.

She deserves better than marketing masquerading as moral authority.

So does your daughter.

It’s time to remind corporations: You may sell products, but you don’t get to sell souls — especially not our children’s.

Gisele Unfettered

In Radical Tenderness: The Value of Vulnerability in an Often Unkind World, the steely political-wife autobiography by Gisele Barreto Fetterman that comes packaged in the candied outer shell of self-help literature, the author writes of wanting, as a new mom, to "be there for one another when it came to daily challenges." One day, absent any apparent invitation, Ms. Fetterman arrives at a friend’s house and "immediately" asks if there is something she can do.

The post Gisele Unfettered appeared first on .

IVF Experiments That Mix And Match Multiple Adults’ DNA Are Bad For Kids And Society

Scientists are paving the way for people in polyamorous relationships to commission the creation of children with their DNA.