Build on rock or on sand.

Henry Martin’s article in Islander VI, “Influence Is Not Power,” is a 10/10, go read right now sort of article. I have, frankly, no disagreement with what is said (unless I’ve missed something), and I have not the practical experience to add oodles of technical advice. So instead I’ll point out a reality the article addressed but which we all need to be aware of- and a crucial point of potential weakness or strength which the article, written from the perspective it is, does not recognize.

The Reality

We must recognize that modern conservative politics, and their adjacent regions, are dominated by three characteristics: corruption, cowardice, and incompetence. No finer example of this exists than the Republican Party. In all of Congress, among 200+ Republicans currently serving (as of August 2026), we have less than five really reliable votes for liberty and perhaps another twenty (I speak in rough terms) who show up on occasion for something not quite in the mainstream’s design, accompanied by another hundred or so who occasionally do something OK on one issue. But come to immigration, voting security, foreign aid, debt, public morals, abortion, and so many other utterly critical issues, and the support dries up to just one or two or three.

And one of those, Thomas Massie, was ousted by a Republican party effort.

Corruption: preference for personal advancement or institutional advancement over principle and righteousness and even avowed principles.

Cowardice: to refuse to take a stand against the powerful, the loud, and the liberal (though admittedly much of this ‘cowardice’ proceeds from the fact that ‘conservative’ politicians are almost invariably far more liberal and big-government than they profess to the public.).

Incompetence: because the system picks for institutional orthodoxy, for willingness to participate in corruption, for skill in flattery, and for connections, it picks out people whose skills are not in their professed areas. Pollsters, pundits, judges, bureaucrats, campaign managers, candidates, they’re all chosen for skill in areas that have little to do with their direct job and are often directly contrary to effectiveness in that job, then incentivized to continue that neglect or misuse. Thus, they appear and generally are immensely incompetent.

We must recognize that the entire conservative institution is pervaded with these three traits, combined in different men in different quantities. The media, the institutionalized alt-media, the big donors, the PACs, the party leadership, the established pundits, the candidates, the incumbents, the companies, the pollsters, the campaign managers, all of these and more are as a rule part of the muddle. Much can be retrieved from the mess- but we can only accept people from the ‘conservative’ institutions (often avowedly liberal in their underlying principles) and their environs after thoroughly vetting them not just for dissidence (mere dissidence, as in Nick Fuentes, is worse than useless) but for actual competence, actual integrity to their principles, actual principles, and actual guts to keep going- as well as the humility to make that all worthwhile in the context Martin describes.

(Another implication: if he thinks being on Fox News is a commendation of his skill and character, he’s not reliable; at best, he’s blind.)

A Crucial Point

“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Ps. 127:1).

The patronage-action-information-worldview network, the organization of cultural and political action which Martin points to, cannot prosper unless it bows to the Lord God, having been “[taught] to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:20). God gives the increase, and unless we look to God for the increase, all our efforts will in the end be filthy rags (Is. 64:6), counterproductive arrangements which bring on us only further curse (Matt. 12:45).

An organization which is not founded on the rock is founded on the sand (Matt. 7:24-27, 12:30). If we want to effect lasting change, if we want to bring greater holiness and have it last, we have to bow before the Lord our Redeemer, to become His servants, in order that what we build may, being His, triumph by His might (Is. 26:12).

God bless.