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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:
- Tanner Greer
- Economist Tyler Cowen
- Richard Reeves: A Life in Institutions
- Jake Adelstein: The Reporter Who Became His Story
- Jim Goad (1961-2026)
- Moira Greyland
- Robert Oscar Lopez: The Inconvenient Witness
- Two Ledgers: Decoding the Gurus and the Price of Talk
- The Pervert’s Progress: Costin Vlad Alamariu and the Making of Bronze Age Pervert
- Curtis Yarvin: A Life Against Democracy
- Mark Helprin: Against the Current
- Mark Brandt: The Man Who Asked Who Else Is Prejudiced
- John T. Jost: The Psychologist of Acquiescence
- Strange Bedfellows in the Academy: Alliance Theory and the Straussian Schism
- Tournier on Desmond Ford
- The Fence and the Blessing: How Jews Have Thought About Gentiles
- Tournier on Luke Ford
- Tournier on The Nostradamus Kid
- An Alliance Theory of Antisemitism
- Tournier on Cinema Paradiso and Desmond Ford
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: Christianity
Decoding Bible Scholar Bart Ehrman
Per Alliance Theory: Bart Ehrman functions as a high-status defector who provides “cognitive insurance” for those leaving the evangelical alliance. In David Pinsof’s framework, a defector is most valuable when they retain the specialized knowledge of the group they left. … Continue reading
Posted in Bible, Christianity
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Decoding Jewish New Testament Scholar Amy Jill-Levine
Per Alliance Theory: Amy-Jill Levine functions as a high-status neutral arbiter who manages the inflation of moral threats between competing religious coalitions. According to the framework of David Pinsof, humans use moral language and scholarship to coordinate alliances and attack … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Amy Jill-Levine, Anti-Semitism, Bible, Christianity, Judaism
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Orthodox Judaism’s Leading Apologists
From age eight to eleven, living at Avondale College in Australia, I had to read thirty to forty pages of Christian apologetics every day but the Sabbath and then type a one-page summary to show my father I had understood … Continue reading
Posted in Christianity, Judaism, Marc B. Shapiro, R. J. B. Soloveitchik, R. Natan Slifkin
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The Different Ways Fundamentalist Jews & Christians Struggle With Modernity
Fundamentalist Christians navigate the same alliance pressures as the Haredi world. Both groups face a modern world that claims jurisdiction over their sacred texts. However, their strategies for managing epistemic defeat differ based on their relationship to the Bible and … Continue reading
Posted in Bible, Christianity, Haredi, Hasidim
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Decoding Rabbi Meir Soloveichik
Per Alliance Theory: Rabbi Meir Soloveichik does not operate primarily inside the yeshiva power structure. He operates at the intersection of Orthodoxy, American conservatism, and elite policy culture. That changes the game. He is not trying to reform halachic authority … Continue reading
Posted in America, Christianity, R. Meir Soloveichik
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Decoding Christian Theology
ChatGPT says: Theology matters more to Christians than to Jews because it plays a different alliance function in each tradition. Christianity historically built large, fast-scaling alliances that crossed kinship lines, languages, and political borders. For that kind of coalition to … Continue reading
Posted in Christianity
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Abide With Me
I asked AI to explain to me why I love this hymn. ChatGPT says: You love Abide with Me because it speaks to a layer of you that predates theology and survives conversion. First, it is a dusk hymn. Not … Continue reading
Posted in Christianity
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Why Do Elites Keep Predicting The Death Of Fundamentalism?
Everybody has a hero system, and just because you think this other hero system is outdated does not mean it will fade away any time soon. As the decades go by, the masses keep clinging to their guns and to … Continue reading
Posted in Alliance Theory, Christianity, Epistemics, Orthodoxy
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How’s Judeo-Christianity doing these days?
ChatGPT says: Uneven, fragmented, and no longer hegemonic. Alliance Theory says Judeo-Christianity isn’t “declining” so much as losing its role as the moral operating system of the elite alliance. Once that happens, everything else follows. Here’s the real state of … Continue reading
Posted in America, Christianity
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Has Tucker Descended Into Madness? (1-30-26)
01:00 Has Tucker Descended Into Madness? (1-30-26)06:00 The Rise & Fall of the Enlightenment, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=16742618:00 The Trajectory Of Christian Nationalism, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=16741950:00 The Golden Age For Jews In America Was A Historically Contingent Alliance That Has Now Fractured, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=1674031:09:40 Video: Inside … Continue reading
Posted in America, Christianity, Jews
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