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"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:
- Dennis Prager v Cedars-Sinai Lawsuit
- Dennis Prager Through Randall Collins: Interaction Ritual Chains
- What is a ‘Received Idea’?
- Jordan Bardella: The Manufacture of Normality
- Everyone Became Television: Bourdieu’s Warning and the 2026 Iran War
- Marine Le Pen
- The Coalition-Proximity Rule
- Nigel Farage
- Bernard Haykel: A Life Between the Text and the Gun
- Walker Connor (1926-2017)
- Benedict Anderson and the Nation as Imagination
- Anthony D. Smith: The Student Who Kept the Question and Rejected the Answer
- Ernest Gellner
- Eric Kaufmann: The Man Who Made the Majority Visible
- Dominic Cummings: A Biography
- Steve Lopez: The Last City Columnist
- California Historian Kevin Starr
- Stephen Kotkin: A Life in Power
- William T. Vollmann: An American Life in Excess
- Rod Dreher: A Life in Exile
BEST POSTS:
- * The Enlightenment Wasn’t Enlightened (6-23-26)
* Mr. Burge Draws The Line (6-23-26)
* 'Improving on Democracy' (6-17-26)
* People Leak To People Who Are Fun (6-11-26)
* Why Does Australia Produce So Many Great Journalists? (6-11-26)
* Steve Wynn and the Press: Power, Litigation, and the Contest Over Las Vegas (6-3-26)
* Sheldon Adelson and the Journalists (6-3-26)
* The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility (6-2-26)
* The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth (6-2-26)
* Show Me How It Travels (6-2-26)
* The Norm Explainers (6-2-26)
* Centering Marginalized Voices (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Washington Post put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Financial Times put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for the Los Angeles Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for The New York Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* Why Wembanyama Lives on the Perimeter (5-31-26)
* The Emotional Palettes Of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco & Sacramento (5-27-26)
* The Administrative Capital: Sacramento Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* San Diego - The Quiet Republic (5-27-26)
* The Quiet Bar: San Diego Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* SF v LA Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* Why Talent Travels Poorly Between San Francisco and Los Angeles (5-27-26)
* San Francisco and Los Angeles as Rival Models of Urban Access (5-27-26)
* Social Cliques in New York, 2026 (5-25-26)
* Social Cliques in San Francisco, 2026 (5-25-26)
* The Rival Courts of Washington (5-25-26)
* The City of Private Rooms (5-25-26)
Category Archives: Catholics
Pope Leo XIV (b. 1955)
The Great Delusion If John J. Mearsheimer’s anthropology is right, the global diplomacy, encyclicals, and overarching mission of Pope Leo XIV (b. 1955) represent a noble but structurally impossible crusade to substitute tribal logic with universal moral rules. Elected as … Continue reading
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E. Michael Jones, Culture Wars & Iran
Author E. Michael Jones sits at the center of a small, dense world run out of South Bend, Indiana. He founded Culture Wars magazine as Fidelity in 1981, then renamed it after he borrowed Bismarck's word Kulturkampf to name the … Continue reading
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Theology as History: E. Michael Jones and the Problem of the Single Cause
The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Impact on World History (2008) by E. Michael Jones presents a theology of history as history. The book runs nearly 1,200 pages, footnotes heavily, and covers terrain from the Gospel of John through Bolshevism, … Continue reading
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The Pope Versus the President: An Alliance Theory Reading of the Leo XIV–Trump Feud
The clash between Pope Leo XIV and Donald Trump looks, on the surface, like a moral disagreement about war. A pope condemns a threat to destroy Iranian civilization. A nationalist president defends it as necessary deterrence. Commentators slot the conflict … Continue reading
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Chicago, Peru, Rome: The Making of Pope Leo XIV
Pope Leo XIV, born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago in 1955, looks like a rupture if you focus on nationality. Track his formation instead of his passport, and the story becomes almost archetypal. Leo is a creature of specific institutional … Continue reading
The Jurisdictional Wars: Alliance Theory and the Battle for Roman Catholic Authority
Roman Catholicism does not present itself as a system of competing factions. It presents itself as a universal Church grounded in apostolic continuity, sacramental life, and magisterial teaching. The unity it claims is not merely organizational but ontological: the Church … Continue reading
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How Do The Trad Monotheisms Respond The Fuentes Era?
ChatGPT says: Each tradition responds to the Fuentes phenomenon—charismatic grievance politics wrapped in religious or civilizational rhetoric—through its own theological instincts about authority, sin, and community. The differences trace back to how each system handles alienation and belonging in a … Continue reading
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Jews & Protestants Tend To Be Techno-Optimists While Catholics Not So Much
Jews & Protestants tend to be more open to new ways of doing things, to be more cutting edge, to be more vulnerable to fads, to be more likely to go woke and counter-woke. ChatGPT: Both Jews and Protestants share … Continue reading
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Protestants vs Catholics
I grew up a WASP and we held stereotypes that Catholic cities and countries were corrupt, superstitious and backward. What are Catholic stereotypes about Protestant countries? ChatGPT says: Catholic stereotypes about Protestant countries tend to invert the old WASP tropes. … Continue reading
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The Catholic Church Has Been A Haven For Gays
Christopher Caldwell writes: For decades before Vatican II, in fact, the Church had become a haven for the homosexually inclined—decidedly not for pedophiles, though in our own era of gay liberation it became politically necessary to label the source of … Continue reading
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