Why CheckPoint News?

The conservative fight isn’t about talking points. It’s about real stories and real people.

I’m Isaac Willour, the editor-in-chief of Checkpoint News, a publication of the Institute for Faith and Freedom. I want to take a minute and explain why we’re doing this.

 

You’ve probably been told in one form or another that ‘conservatives need more storytellers.’ Frankly, I think that’s a dumb way to put it. Conservatives have tons of storytellers—the problem is that a lot of them are really bad. I’m referring to the kinds of storytellers who play it safe and stick with cheap talking points about socialism and take easy shots at the woke left. Let’s be clear: wokeness, properly understood, is a disease, and conservatives have an obligation to fight for our values in the public square. But that’s just the problem—the public square is complicated, and victory is not guaranteed. People don’t trust conservatives to deliver the kind of person-first cultural output that has come to indicate true understanding and compassion.

 

I’m tired of that trend, and so are you. Reversing that trend is going to take real work, and it’s our job to make sure that we respond correctly to the unbelievably complicated and messy world in which we live—a world divided, torn apart, and too often painted in stripes of rage, hatred, and malformed stupidity. Yet, that’s the world we live in, and these are the trends that the Institute for Faith and Freedom is seeking to help reverse. So how do we do that? Not by being storytellers—but by being good ones.

 

Freedom matters. As a journalist, I have seen the value of freedom in the eyes of everyone from freedom fighters in Hong Kong to Ukrainian refugees. But the stories we tell aren’t about freedom—they’re about free people. We’re not fighting against progressive ideas or against wokeness or against Marxism—we’re fighting for the people who’ve been hurt by evil ideas and deserve the better way that faith and freedom represent.

 

If there is one thing that I’m learning more and more, it’s that we will never win by fighting against ideas. We will win by fighting for people, real people in search of meaningful life, authentic liberty, and the pursuit of real happiness. Those are the issues and stories that we’re looking forward to bringing to Checkpoint this year. Thank you for being a part of this fight—the best is yet to come.