- https://PayPal.Me/lukeisback
"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:
- Tournier on Desmond Ford
- The Borrowed Robe: How Antisemitism Dresses in Each Age’s Virtue
- The Fence and the Blessing: How Jews Have Thought About Gentiles
- A Place For You
- Tournier on Luke Ford
- Tournier on The Nostradamus Kid
- An Alliance Theory of Antisemitism
- Tournier on Cinema Paradiso and Desmond Ford
- The Self-Hating Jew
- The Alliance Theory in the Academy
- 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)
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: Carl Schmitt
Democracy in America
I respect Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America for its stories. I respect how it serves academic status claims and fetish games. I respect that this book by a French aristocrat flatters intellectuals and that they love playing with it … Continue reading
Posted in America, Carl Schmitt, Stephen Turner
Comments Off on Democracy in America
Stephen Turner’s Unfinished Work: Gaps, Needed Boldness, and a Freer Intellectual Trajectory
Stephen Turner’s reconstruction of democratic theory begins as an act of intellectual hygiene. Strip away the myths. Discard the will of the people, justice, and the rule of law as normative ideals. What remains is procedure. Law is a hierarchy … Continue reading
Posted in Carl Schmitt, Democracy, DSM, Martin Gurri, Max Weber, Opiods, Stephen Turner
Comments Off on Stephen Turner’s Unfinished Work: Gaps, Needed Boldness, and a Freer Intellectual Trajectory
The Sovereign Decision: What the Laws of War Say About Who Rules
Every legal system requires someone to decide what the law cannot cover. The rules run out at some point — in the hard case, the emergency, the situation the drafters did not anticipate — and at that point someone must … Continue reading
Posted in Carl Schmitt
Comments Off on The Sovereign Decision: What the Laws of War Say About Who Rules
It’s Hard & Often Pointless To Regulate War
Carl Schmitt argued that law cannot control politics in moments of existential conflict. His famous formulation, “sovereign is he who decides on the exception,” means that real authority belongs to whoever can suspend normal rules when survival is at stake. … Continue reading
Posted in Carl Schmitt, Human Rights, International Law, International Relations
Comments Off on It’s Hard & Often Pointless To Regulate War
Democracy and the Politics of the Extraordinary: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt (2008)
This book by Andreas Kalyvas helps us understand the Iran War. 1. Wars Create “Extraordinary Politics” That Break Normal Rules The book argues that democratic systems normally operate through routine institutional politics, but occasionally politics shifts into an extraordinary phase … Continue reading
Posted in Carl Schmitt, Iran
Comments Off on Democracy and the Politics of the Extraordinary: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt (2008)
Decoding Carl Schmitt
ChatGPT says: Carl Schmitt is best decoded, through Alliance Theory, as the theorist who made alliance logic explicit and then stripped it of moral camouflage. David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory starts from a psychological claim. Moral language coordinates coalitions. Schmitt arrived … Continue reading
Posted in Carl Schmitt
Comments Off on Decoding Carl Schmitt
Decoding Jacob Taubes
Gemini says: Jacob Taubes remains one of the more enigmatic and controversial figures in 20th-century intellectual history. He was a man of immense erratic energy who moved through the highest circles of academia while maintaining a reputation for personal and … Continue reading
Posted in Carl Schmitt
Comments Off on Decoding Jacob Taubes
Decoding Carl Schmitt
ChatGPT says: Carl Schmitt still fascinates academics, and Alliance Theory explains why better than ideology or scandal. 1. He names the thing institutions hide Modern liberal orders prefer to talk about rules, norms, procedures. Schmitt talks about decision, friend–enemy distinction, … Continue reading
Posted in Carl Schmitt, Elites
Comments Off on Decoding Carl Schmitt
Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt: The Politics of Order and Myth
John P. McCormick writes an essay in this 2013 book: * In both Political theology and Roman Catholicism, [Carl] Schmitt suggests that a dangerous, unqualified belief in humanity’s natural goodness motivates a peculiarly modern agenda bent on tearing down all … Continue reading
Posted in Carl Schmitt
Comments Off on Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt: The Politics of Order and Myth
Trump’s State Of Exception
The government took away many rights during Covid by invoking a state of emergency, and now Trump & Elon are implicitly stating that America is in a state of emergency, and that the executive has to grab the rudder to … Continue reading
Posted in Carl Schmitt
Comments Off on Trump’s State Of Exception