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"Luke Ford reports all of the 'juicy' quotes, and has been doing it for years." (Marc B. Shapiro)
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff) LATEST POSTS:
- William K. Wimsatt Jr.: The Judge of Evidence
- Larissa MacFarquhar: The Woman Who Slows Judgment Down
- Stanley Fish: A Biography
- Hortense Spillers: The Grammar Lesson
- Paul Gilroy: A Biography
- Walter Benn Michaels: A Biography
- Harvey Cox: The Theologian Who Bet on the City
- Love is Love
- The Great Delusion About The Great Books Curriculum
- Renee DiResta and the Information Wars
- Brandy Zadrozny: The Librarian Who Went to War
- Lee Edelman: The Man Who Said No to the Future
- Henry Louis Gates Jr.: The Man Who Rebuilt the Archive
- N. Katherine Hayles: The Chemist Who Rewrote the Human
- The Disorder of Jack Halberstam
- Sports, Family & Tribe
- David Morgan: The Man Who Took Cheap Pictures of Jesus Seriously
- Mark Juergensmeyer: The Man Who Interviewed the Holy Warriors
- David Enoch: The Philosopher Who Says Morality Is Real
- The Unsaying of Karen Armstrong
BEST POSTS:
* American Epistemics (1-19-26)
* The Most Socially Toxic Inconvenient Truths (1-18-26)
* The Luke Ford Genre (1-18-26)
* The Filkins Pivot: Legacy Prestige and the Fracturing of the Chattering Class (1-16-26)
* Decoding The Trump Doctrine (1-4-26)
* If Tatiana Schlossberg were “Tatiana Smith” (12-30-25)
* ‘I’m So Trained’: How The Credential Society Burned Down the Palisades (12-28-25)
* Status Closure and The Lost Generation (12-25-25)
* The Bondi Massacre (12-15-25)
* Sydney Jews Learn That Their Aussie Social Contract Has Become A Suicide Pact (12-15-25)
* Terror in Sydney: Analyzing the “Chanukah by the Sea” Massacre (12-14-25)
* Decoding Nick Fuentes (11-2-25)
* The Landscape of Emotional Sobriety (10-29-30)
* The Rise & Fall Of Air Supply (10-19-25)
* No Kings, No Results: How Elite Pride Replaced Real Progress (10-19-25)
* You Are An Important Soldier In A Great War (9-7-25)
* The Revolt Of The Masses (8-31-25)
* The Covenant of Ashwood (8-24-25)
* If you can’t trust central bankers, then who can you trust? (8-23-25)
* Why Is The Elite Media Singing From The Same Hymnal About The Trump-Putin Summit? (8-17-25)
* Why Do Smart News Operations Sound So Uniformly Dumb So Often? (8-16-25)
* Nobody Is Coming (8-10-25)
* When Elites Restrict Our Speech, It’s Because They Love Truth, Freedom & Democracy (8-3-25)
Author Archives: Luke Ford
Decoding The Iran War (3-8-26)
01:00 Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History (2025), https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=17456111:20 Vali Nasr Exclusive: ‘War is being waged ‘: Vali Nasr on Israel-US campaign against Iran25:00 The First Gulf War, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=17460528:00 Understanding The Elite Frame On The Iran War, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=17462535:00 Mark Halperin: … Continue reading
Understanding The Elite Frame On The Iran War
Large news organizations learn from the last war. They rarely evaluate each conflict in isolation. Instead they carry forward the moral lessons they believe they failed to apply previously. Before the first Gulf War in 1990-91, much of the elite … Continue reading
Why Different Groups View The Iran War Differently
The foreign policy establishment, often called the blob, operates with a buffered identity. These planners and analysts view the world as a system of manageable, secular states that respond to rational incentives. To a buffered mind, the threat from Iran … Continue reading
You Don’t Win Wars Through Logic & Rhetoric
The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 for reasons that had little to do with weapons of mass destruction. The weapons argument was a tool of mobilization, a pretext chosen because it could unite a domestic coalition, satisfy the requirements … Continue reading
When American Presidents Tell You To Rise Up
If an American president told you to suck off a dog, would you suck off a dog? I doubt it. The elite talking point goes like this: Bush was wrong after the first Gulf War to encourage Iraqis to rise … Continue reading
Why do elites love the word ‘dialogue’?
“Dialogue” is one of the favorite prestige words of the diplomatic and intellectual class because it performs several alliance functions at once. First, it signals civility and moral elevation. Saying “we need dialogue” places the speaker on the side of … Continue reading
The First Gulf War
John Mearsheimer views the First Gulf War as a classic case of limited war managed with realism. He argues that expelling Iraq from Kuwait was a necessary act of power politics to prevent Saddam Hussein from dominating the regional oil … Continue reading
Richard Haass: ‘America chose this war — and must now choose how to end it’
Richard Haass is speaking from the core of the American foreign policy establishment. His essay is less about Iran than about defending the worldview of the professional diplomatic class. Now think about David Pinsof’s argument that most public reasoning is … Continue reading
Why Do Elites Love The Word ‘Fraught’?
“Fraught” is elite code. It signals three things at once. First, it signals complexity. Elite discourse rewards the performance of nuance. Saying something is “fraught” lets a writer imply that the issue is complicated, morally tangled, and full of tradeoffs … Continue reading
Why Do Elites Love The Word ‘Metastasized’?
“Metastasized” borrows prestige from medicine. First, it imports scientific authority. Metastasis is a technical oncology term. When elites use it in politics or foreign policy, they borrow the authority of medical science. Saying “terrorism has metastasized” sounds more analytical than … Continue reading