Influencers, Those They Influence, And Those Who Influence Them

     I have to run off to a dentist’s appointment in a little while, so this will be a quickie. We speak of “influencers” today as if opinion-forming bellwethers were a new phenomenon. Sorry, they aren’t. However, due to developments in communications, especially in the digital realm, the subject has acquired a scope far greater than it would have been in the radio years or the early television years.

     This morning, a significant voice on Second Amendment rights has applied his intellect to understanding the divergence between the influence of influencers – sorry, Gentle Reader – and actual electoral performance:

     Braden Langley might seem a bit rough-hewn, but he’s highly intelligent and has put a lot of time into studying the currents that run through American politics. His thesis in the above is simple, but it wouldn’t occur to persons who take opinion polls and the follower counts of influencers as something primary, impervious to question. “Influence” in real-world terms diverges greatly from the undifferentiated aggregates commanded by persons who reach and appeal to global audiences.

     Influencers are themselves influenced by their followers. If the followers trend Leftward, they will exert a significant force on the influencer to position himself to the Left. He has a natural incentive to retain his existing followers and attract new ones. Money is often involved through advertising and sponsorships. The global audience made possible by the Internet is far more Left-inclined than the one that votes in American elections.

     Remember back in 2004, when foreign figures such as Richard Dawkins and David Cornwall (a.k.a. “John LeCarre”) tried to persuade Americans to elect John Kerry to the presidency rather than George W. Bush? It didn’t work; Left-inclined foreign voices don’t appeal to many Americans. But superficial attention to how many persons admire those figures, without attention to where the majority of those persons are situated and whether they can vote in American elections, misled many casual observers. (Perhaps some wanted to be misled, but that subject is beyond the scope of this tirade.)

     Americans are not easily led by persons who don’t share American values. But influencers, including American commentators who command large audiences of faceless followers, are a different story. This might just be another way of phrasing the old maxim “follow the money,” but what of that?

     Have a nice day.

2026’s Most Inconvenient Question

     In the philosophical realm, arguments about meaning can go on forever. Meaning arises from interpretation, which makes it a personal matter rather than something that can be pinned down once and for all. But average persons don’t spend a lot of time in the philosophical realm, Ayn Rand’s exhortations notwithstanding. By and large, we deal with one another on the objective plane. In that plane, the meanings of the words we use must be agreed upon with a high degree of specificity.

     Consider just how awkward and irritating communication with others would be, were we all to take Humpty Dumpty’s attitude toward words:

     'As I was saying, that seems to be done right—though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now—and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents—'
     'Certainly,' said Alice.
     'And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'
     'I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.
     Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
     'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.
     'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.'
     'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
     'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master—that's all.'

     The Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch are surely familiar with the Left’s tactic of redefining common words to give them wholly new meanings. The manipulation of language for political purposes is among their favorite ways to avoid actually confronting an issue. It’s frustrating and maddening, which is why it works. Communication is impossible between two persons who give different meanings to common words.

     But this is the Year of Our Lord 2026. The hour has come in which the Left’s unwillingness to give words specific meanings can be turned against them. It has arrived in the form of a question the Democrat Party cannot answer:

What does it mean to say “I’m a Democrat?”

     Like it? I thought you might.

* * *

     The domination of electoral politics by two major parties has many negative consequences, but it does provide one convenience: to attain political power requires alignment with one major party or the other. For power-seeking purposes, if you’re not a Hatfield, you must be a McCoy. And the Left is utterly consumed with power. Therefore, it has focused on capturing the Democrat Party and bending its stances to serve a hard-Left agenda.

     The men who determine the platform and tactics of the Democrat Party are focused on getting their candidates elected. Those strategists naturally want there to be more Democrat voters than Republican voters. All else is a sideshow. What their victorious candidates will do with their offices after being seated is almost completely irrelevant.

     This has given rise to a “Big Tent” pseudo-philosophy in which – by the decisions of party leaders – it’s unnecessary for any two persons who claim to be Democrats to agree on anything. All that matters is that they vote for Democrat Party nominees. What do those candidates stand for? Never mind that; just pull the “straight ticket” Democrat lever and go home.

     That makes “What is a Democrat?” answerable in only one fashion: “He votes for Democrat Party nominees exclusively.”

     Do you doubt this? Then read this article:

     Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin closed his party’s summer meeting in Austin, Texas, on Aug. 15 by calling the Democratic Party a “big tent” and telling members to stop applying litmus tests to one another. The speakers who followed him over the next hour demonstrated how much room that tent is being asked to cover.
     Former DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe told members to stop using factional labels at all. Meanwhile, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) claimed to be part of the “economic patriotism wing” of the party and laid out a policy agenda. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), who sits on the leadership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, warned that progressive candidates must be careful not to hand Republicans ammunition.
     Martin, closing a three-day meeting that also adopted the party’s 2028 presidential nominating calendar, framed the argument around the size of the party’s coalition.
     “We don’t strengthen our party through stricter and stricter litmus tests,” Martin said. “You do not build a majority by constantly looking for reasons to throw people out of it.”
     He traced the point to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition, which he said brought together big-city residents, small-town Americans, rural Southerners, northern labor unions, and working-class families. That coalition also included “people who have been pushed to the margins, including religious, racial, and ethnic minorities,” Martin said, and the party welcomed all of them into the Democrats’ “big-tent party.”

     I find it particularly illuminating that Martin cites FDR, as that president governed in a fashion diametrically opposed to his party’s 1932 platform. Yet it was that platform that got Roosevelt elected.

     Here is what Roosevelt said when confronted by that disjunction:

     The broken party platform, as an object, had a curious end. Instead of floating away and out of sight as a proper party platform should, it kept coming back with the tide. Once it came so close that the President had to notice it. Then all he did was to turn it over, campaign side down, with the words: "I was able, conscientiously, to give full assent to this platform and to develop its purpose in campaign speeches. A campaign, however, is apt to partake so much of the character of a debate and the discussion of individual points that the deeper and more permanent philosophy of the whole plan (where one exists) is often lost."
     At that the platform sank.

     [Garet Garrett, The People’s Pottage]

     This makes the question “What is a Democrat?” effectively unanswerable.

     Say, remember when Matt Walsh was asking various Democrats and Leftists “What is a woman?” They didn’t care for it much, did they? Does that suggest anything to you, Gentle Reader?

* * *

     I just looked back over this mountain of drivel and was appalled. It quotes Lewis Carroll, The Epoch Times, and Garet Garrett in a single Liberty’s Torch piece! Amazing! And probably never to be repeated… well, at least this year. But the point remains salient. There is no way to distinguish a Democrat from a non-Democrat other than by the lever he pulls in the voting booth.

     Given that distinction, is it fair to ask a Democrat “What are you voting for?” Or is it merely cruel? And to what or whom is the matter of most use?

     I may return to this tomorrow. Meanwhile, have a nice day.

A Vital Insight

     Quite soon it will be a year since Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk was murdered in the open air in Utah. The anniversary date, September 10, will surely bring a number of reflections on Charlie’s life, the brutal tragedy of his murder, and the consequences for political discourse in these United States. No doubt those who were glad to see him taken from us will have their own little celebrations.

     Charlie was a phenomenon. He seemed to have “come out of nowhere.” He demonstrated a talent for verbal engagement that’s become rare among political and para-political figures. Given his youth, it seemed to have been innate. Many have lamented the loss of that skill quite as deeply as the loss of the man himself.

     Yet beneath Charlie’s facility was a simple fact that anyone imbued with sincerity and good will could employ. The difficulty in making use of it isn’t intellectual. It’s quite easy to understand why and how it facilitates outreach. But putting it to work demands humility and benevolence of its employer.

     The fact is as simple to state as Henry Hazlitt’s “lesson:”

Outreach is not warfare.
The activist isn’t there to defeat an enemy.
He’s there to make a convert—a friend.

     It’s been reported that when a woman asked him why he did not destroy his Confederate enemies, Abraham Lincoln replied thus:

     When an old woman rebuked him for his conciliatory attitude toward the South, which she felt should be “destroyed” after the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln replied, “Madam, do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

     That attitude colored Lincoln’s interpersonal relations. It was that attitude that moved Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, as he looked down upon the dying Lincoln, to say: “There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever seen. Now he belongs to the ages.”

     Charlie had internalized that sentiment. He treated those who came to debate him as potential allies in the quest for freedom and the renewal of Christian society. If some were unconvinced and hostile, more were struck by his sincerity and benevolence. He was a “warrior for Christ” who regarded even one who approached with drawn sword as a potential friend and ally.

     What did Jesus say to those who gathered to hear Him?

     “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” [Matthew 11:28-30]

     Christ didn’t “defeat” the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and so on. He simply preached a better message: an easier yoke and a lighter burden. When a Scribe responded positively to His message, Jesus complimented him:

     And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all?
     And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
     And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he: And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.
     And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And no man after that durst ask him any question.

     [Mark 12:28-34]

     The effective evangelist, whether his message is religious, secular, or other, is there to liberate: to offer his listeners something that would make them freer and better off. Defeating them is nowhere in his thoughts. By contrast, most political polemicists – and, sad to say, no few Christian preachers – treat the holder of opposed views as an enemy to be brought down, even subjugated or destroyed.

     I’m no saint. I’ve made that mistake many times. Sometimes it was out of frustration at “not being able to make them see.” Sometimes it was out of an unadmitted conviction of superior wisdom. Whatever the case, it’s always a mistake even when you “win.”

     Charlie Kirk was effective because he knew better. He treated his “opponents” as potential friends and allies. And he won quite a few of them to his side. It was probably the principal reason for his murder. Why bother to kill an ineffective evangelist?

     On the anniversary of Charlie’s death, let’s celebrate that aspect of his outreach along with the rest of his life. Let’s urge it onto others who would take up his cause. There seems to be a shortage.

I Got Nothin’

     …and today, I’m all too aware of it. But I hate to go so many days putting nothing up on the site. So for those of you who love music -- all kinds of music -- have a bit of whimsy from a professor of music theory in Germany: what we would have been treated to had Saturday Night Fever been filmed not in 1980 but in 1580.

     Wasn’t that refreshing? Anyway, have a good Sunday. May God bless and keep you all.

Words Fail Me Dept.

     When you’re married to a murder-mystery addict, you wind up watching a lot of British TV, as the British are the world’s acknowledged masters of the murder mystery. That naturally leads to reading British murder mysteries, of which there are God’s plenty. Those, too, have their fascinations. And of course, if you’re a news-obsessive, you start following the news from Britain, out of curiosity about just how many murders really occur in the Sceptered Isle per unit time.

     Well, as it happens, there are actual murders in merrie olde England. But not in the profusion their panoply of murder mysteries would suggest. Why, had they been not fictional but actual, the murders in Midsomer County alone would have depopulated the nation.

     However, that might be about to change:

     Former Conservative minister Edwina Currie has drawn attention after suggesting that a brothel would be needed near a rural English village where about 1,200 young male asylum seekers are expected to be accommodated.
     Currie made the remark during a discussion on Times Radio about asylum accommodation at a former military site near Little Piddington, Buckinghamshire.
     In a video from the discussion, Currie raised concerns about the potential social impact of placing a large number of young men in a small rural community.
     “I’m not sure I’m going to be allowed to say this, you’re probably going to shut me up in no time at all,” Currie said before making the comment.
     “But the obvious thing that 1,200 young men are going to need in the middle of a village like Little Piddington is a brothel.” Currie immediately acknowledged that such a facility was unlikely to be provided.

     As my highly intelligent and worldly-wise Gentle Readers might expect, Currie’s comment has drawn quite a lot of attention and outrage. But here at Liberty’s Torch, we go beneath the outrage. We plumb for the true horror, the Old Ones that lie dreaming in sunken R’lyeh, ready to awaken when Mankind is ready for its Ultimate Orgy. And why should that celebration of bloodletting not begin in Britain? Indeed, why would the Old Ones prefer any other clime?

     Edwina Currie is an intelligent woman. She was certainly able to predict with high accuracy what her remark would elicit. And she was not disappointed… unless she hoped for other intelligent persons to make the obvious inference from her statement. As far as I’m aware, that inference remains undrawn.

     So let us sojourn to the imaginary realm where Edwina Currie’s fanciful suggestion is realized. A brothel – a legally certified and regulated house of ill repute, where customers can purchase sexual services – is established in Piddington. Further questions now arise:

• Who is going to provide those sexual services?
• How will those migrant Third Worlders afford them? Will the British State provide them as a “benefit?”
• And will those Third World young men be interested in purchasing them, anyway?

     Let us look past the old jokes about State-provided goods and services. Yes, government invariably ruins whatever it touches. That’s why sensible peoples either confine their States in bands of steel or abjure them altogether. Let us ask rather what those young male Third Worlders really want. Can it be made a “market commodity” without repealing the laws of Nature?

     Young male Third World “asylum seekers” have unleashed a plague of rape and other assaults upon British women. British women. Not other Third Worlders. They’re uninterested in women from their homelands. They want the good stuff: the White women. It might even be why they came to Britain.

     So it would be pointless to staff the Piddington Fulfillment Centre for Human Needs with Third World women – if, indeed, there are any Third World women in Britain who would agree to be employed there. The staff must be White British women. Would any number of White British women apply for those posts? Knowing what young male Third Worlders have done to their sister Britons?

     I think it unlikely. But even more unlikely is the prospect of young male Third Worlders going to the Piddington Fulfillment Centre for Human Needs in the first place. These are not civilized people accustomed to civilized dealings with others. They’re savages from savage places, where all that matters is what they can get away with. They probably like rape as much for its redolence of power as they do for “getting a leg over.”

     Yes, I’m serious. And, I think, so was Edwina Currie. What better demonstration of the folly of admitting tens of thousands of savages to the Sceptered Isle could there be than a State-regulated and subsidized brothel whose putative customers ignore it completely?

     The political Establishment of the United Kingdom is among the most perverse and hostile in the world today. Yet there remain a few Conservatives willing to give true coloration to the horrors the State continues to inflict upon helpless, wholly disarmed Britons. Edwina Currie appears to be one. Don’t condemn her. Make use of the weapon she’s given you.

     The pillage of Piddington, a tiny Oxfordshire village, may yet awaken British men to their duties. If so, rivers of blood will follow, for once his wrath is awakened, the Saxon knows little of restraint.

The Wrath Of The Awakened Saxon

It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.

They were not easily moved,
They were icy — willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.

Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not suddently bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.

[Rudyard Kipling]

Ultimate Trust

     Yes, America has a trust problem. That’s hardly news. But the extent of the thing needs to be probed more deeply than it has been by typical social commentators.

     This morning on X / Twitter, the estimable Black Dumpling asks a question whose quiet horror can never be exceeded:

The Lindsay Clancy saga has opened up a new question within me... one I've never really wanted to ask myself but now I am forced to.

Can women be trusted with children?

I know you think I'm just taking the piss here, but I'm not asking for the shock value. I'm doing the math… pic.twitter.com/El4ArxSa3R

— BLACK DUMPLING™ (@BlackDumpling) August 13, 2026

     You know why she’s asked that. You’ve read about the motherly massacres of minor kids. There’ve been a fair number of them, these past few years. The Lindsay Clancy case is only the most recent.

     Is it possible that in today’s hyper-stressful milieu, we can’t trust women with the care and protection of their own children? The pressures on American women today do exceed those of previous eras. Has the dominant pattern of this era, which combines motherhood with wage labor, brought us too close to the edge of what women can bear? Granted that the Lindsay Clancys and the Susan Smiths are nowhere near being representative of American mothers, are such cases telling us something we need to know?

     There’s a rush to judgment in such cases. It splits along a definite if invisible line: exculpative sympathy for the woman on one side; demonization on the other. But little thought goes to the forces that loom behind the decision to bear children in our time.

     Say what you please about women’s liberation, the have-it-all messaging, and whatnot: women are still expected to become mothers. It’s always been that way. Yet we know that some women are unsuited to motherhood, just as some men are unsuited to fatherhood. Women already occupied with wage labor, when pressed to bear and nurture children, face a large burden that not every woman can bear. And that is the prevalent pattern in America today.

     If you’re concerned with plummeting First World fertility rates, the first place to look for the causes is that burden.

     I could go on at length about this. It touches many other aspects of contemporary American life. Hans G. Schantz delineated a few of them:

     “Now couples need to have two careers to support a typical modern lifestyle. We can’t tax the labor in a home-cooked meal. We can tax the labor in takeout food, or the higher cost of a microwave dinner. The economic potential of both halves of the adult population now largely flows into the government where it can serve noble ends instead of petty private interests....

     “The Earth can’t accommodate many more people at a reasonable standard of living. We’re running out of resources. We have to manage and control our population. That’s the real motive behind the women’s movement. Once a women’s studies program convinces a gal she’s a victim of patriarchal oppression, how likely is it she’s going to overcome her indoctrination to be able to bond long enough with a guy to have a big family? If she does get careless with a guy, she’ll probably just have an abortion....

     “All those Career-Oriented Gals are too busy seeking social approval and status at the office to be out starting families and raising kids. They’re encouraged to have fun, be free spirits., and experiment with any man who catches their fancy....And by the time all those COGs are in their thirties and ready to try to settle down and have kids, they’re past their prime. Their fertility peaks in their twenties. It’s all downhill from there....

     “In another generation, we’ll have implemented our own version of China’s One-Child-Per-Couple policy without the nasty forced abortions and other hard repressive policies which people hate. What’s more, there’ll be fewer couples because so many young people will just be hedonistically screwing each other instead of settling down and making families. Makes me wish I were young again, like you, to take full advantage of it. The net effect is we’ll enter the great contraction and begin shrinking our population to more controllable levels....

     Yes: the above is couched in conspiratorial / social engineering terms. That was Hans’s intent in writing his series. And I’m not going to pooh-pooh it. The evidence is consistent with that thesis. But whether or not there is / was conscious intent behind the socioeconomic changes that brought us here, the gravity of the situation cannot be denied.

     It would be salutary for a real pro-woman-as-woman movement to arise. One which:

• Promotes the critical importance of motherhood;
• Recognizes that motherhood is a function that women alone can fulfill;
• Discourages women from accepting duties that conflict with motherhood;
• Discourages husbands from expecting their wives to accept any such duties;
• Reasserts the primacy of the family as the foundation of a stable and healthy society.

     For motherhood is what women are designed for. If there are exceptions, they must be treated as such. They must not be promoted as ideals for women to strive toward.

     We didn’t ask questions like Black Dumpling’s before women entered the workplace. It’s terrifying that it deserves sober consideration today.

Where The Money Goes

     The main cost of just about everything is labor. It may be hidden. It may be indirect. But in nearly every case, the greater part of the price of what you’re paying for is labor.

     My father, who worked in provisioning restaurants and hotels, educated me about this long ago. He taught me to think about the many people involved in getting my purchase to me. Grocery shopping, he said, is about paying the wholesalers, the truckers, the stock boys, the cashiers, and the owner of the store. Dinner out is about paying the cooks, the waiters, the busboys, and the owner of the restaurant. Your money goes to people above all; the material goods are cheap by comparison.

     It’s when labor gets more expensive that significant price increases occur. These days, with prices rising all around us, what those increases are funding is the regiment of workers who take part in conveying retail goods to us. When workers want to live better than they do, they press for wage increases. When their employers agree to such increases, he passes the cost increment along to the purchaser.

     Just now, there’s an ongoing contretemps about tipping restaurant workers, particularly the waiters and waitresses who convey prepared food from the kitchen to the customer’s table. Waiters want larger tips than ever before in the history of restaurant dining. They’re getting strident about it, too. They’ve mounted public campaigns for tips of 30% to 50% of the “menu price” of the meal to become the norm. Those campaigns have drawn a great deal of attention – and no small amount of resentment.

     By and large, waiters aren’t doing better for it. Persons who might have dined out happily a year or two ago are rethinking their choices to do so, in part out of discomfort about the tipping issue. So average tip amounts have not risen significantly, while total restaurant patronage has declined somewhat. That suggests that the campaign has backfired.

     But that desire for more compensation has interesting ways of making itself felt:

     Brian Powell, 45, told Fox News Digital that he and his wife were waiting to catch a flight out of Salt Lake City when she purchased three milkshakes from the airport's Shake Shack location.
     "My wife came to me after buying some shakes and said, 'They charged me more after I didn't tip,'" Powell told Fox News Digital during a Zoom interview from London, where he was vacationing with his wife. "And I thought it was a little interesting."
     Powell said he had visited the location several times before and had never noticed anything similar. Admitting that he was "a bit skeptical," Powell said he returned to the kiosk with his wife and recreated the order while recording the process on his phone.
     "We basically went up and duplicated our order, and the same thing happened," Powell said.
     The video shows two of the three shakes initially listed at $5.99 each. After "no tip" is selected, the kiosk displays a notice saying there has been a pricing update before the shakes appear at $6.49 each — an increase of 50 cents per drink.
     Shake Shack told Fox News Digital the price change was caused by a technology error and that charging customers more for declining to tip is not company policy.

     I know nothing about Shake Shack. I do know that the scriptwriters for Pulp Fiction must be a little disturbed that the price of a shake has risen to $5.99. Yes, the movie was made 32 years ago, but still!

     However, I can’t accept the claim that the price increases were due to a tech glitch. Today, with “pooling” on the rise, more people than ever before are reaching for a piece of the tip pot. Shake Shack may not want to be open about it, but the probabilities favor the “no tip” price increases being a deliberate move. What does it say that customers who did agree to tip didn’t face such increases?

     Just one more of those “May you live in interesting times” phenomena!