Following last week’s shocking killing of conservative broadcaster Charlie Kirk, HeadlinesForever Digital met with many prominent conservatives to discuss the impact of Kirk’s legacy and style on the movement’s future.
According to Heather Mac Donald, a contributing editor of City Journal and a Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, conservatives should “emulate his courage” because Kirk “would not have been silenced.” Mac Donald told HeadlinesForever Digital that this was her point.
It was “absolutely an effort to try to silence conservatives” who plotted Kirk’s murder, according to columnist and pundit Bethany Mandel, who warned HeadlinesForever Digital, saying, “we have to resist the temptation to allow that.”
“We need to keep speaking out and double down on not only Charlie’s message, but his methodology,” added Mandel.
While addressing hundreds of students at Utah Valley University on Wednesday, Kirk was slain when a shooter on an adjacent roof shot him once in the neck.
Tragically, Kirk was declared dead at Timpanogos Regional Hospital after being brought there. Conservatives throughout the world, headed by President Donald Trump, expressed their deepest condolences, calling the tragedy a “dark moment for America.”
Tyler Robinson, 22, of Utah, was apprehended on Friday, according to the authorities.
John Ashbrook, who co-hosts the Republican podcast “Ruthless,” told HeadlinesForever Digital, “Charlie Kirk was a good man.” “And his legacy will endure because none of us will ever forget his leadership nor the voice he provided for millions of regular people across this country.”
A source close to Mac Donald told HeadlinesForever Digital that it is “hard to imagine” that Kirk’s assassination was motivated by “any other reason than that he was breaking the stranglehold of anti-Western ideology on college campuses and beyond.”
“It was sadly fitting that he was killed at a college campus, and not even one known for its leftward leanings, since colleges are the seed bed of modern day speech suppression and the false equations that political contrarian speech = hate speech and that hate speech may be snuffed out—apparently by any means necessary,” according to Mac Donald.
It seems the murderer agreed with those purported censors. The beatification of Luigi Mangione already demonstrated that the historically ignorant and self-centered American students had blossomed into something more harmful.
Concerning future gatherings with major conservative speakers, Mandel urged communities and schools that “claim to care about the future of America and civil discourse” to take responsibility and “ensure adequate security.”
To freely express our political views should not be subject to a security fee, as Mandel stated in an interview with HeadlinesForever Digital.
Famous conservative Ben Shapiro said on X that “we will never stop debating and discussing,” and conservatives have embraced Kirk’s public speaking style and willingness to engage in thought exchanges with others who differ.
“We will never stop standing up for what America is and what she should be,” Shapiro said, going on to say that he plans to keep giving speeches at universities nationwide despite the risks therein.
“They fear us because we are winning,” Mac Donald told HeadlinesForever Digital, adding that it is a cliché and self-serving to say. He went on to suggest that, maybe, there is less of a perceived need to efface someone who is losing a cause anyhow. People were afraid of Kirk because he was succeeding.