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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:
- 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: Populism
Populism & The Rise Of Trump
Populism is a useful frame for understanding Trump’s rise, but it is neither sufficient on its own nor always the sharpest lens available. The debate among political scientists and historians has produced several competing frameworks, each illuminating different aspects of … Continue reading
Posted in Populism
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Populist vs Elitist Moral Signalling
Animals signal. People signal. We all signal. Why? Because signalling is adaptive and virtue signalling is virtuous. ChatGPT says: Elite moral signaling is procedural and sanitizing. It produces roles, committees, standards, funding streams, and a public performance of care. It … Continue reading
Posted in Australia, Bondi Beach, Elites, Ethics, Islam, Journalism, Populism
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Elite Collusion To Suppress Populism
Ross Douthat writes: The modes through which Europe and Canada have sought to suppress populism involve harsh restrictions on speech, elite collusion and other expression of managerial illiberalism. And what is China’s dictatorship if not managerial illiberalism in full flower? … Continue reading
The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America
The authors write in this 2023 book: We challenge the static, “essentialist” conception of ideology that currently dominates public and academic discourse alike, and instead propose a “social” conception in which the political spectrum and the ideological terms associated with … Continue reading
Politics As Resource Distribution
There seems to be a strong belief among the elite, as exemplified by the 2004 book What’s The Matter With Kansas?, that politics should primarily be about resource distribution. I moved to America in 1977 when I was 11. By … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Politics, Populism, Stephen Turner
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Populism Means Revolt Against The Managers
Nathan Levine (an Orthodox Christian) aka N.S. Lyons writes in the New York Times: …much of what is commonly called “populist” politics can be more accurately described as part of an anti-managerial revolution attempting to roll back the expansion of … Continue reading
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The Embodied Expression Of The Elite Attitude
In his Oct. 7, 2024 “Israel Update” video with the Hudson Institute’s Middle East analyst Michael Doran, right-wing Israeli historian Gadi Taub selected this as his dumbest media commentary moment of the week: “[Journalist] Ilana Dayan speaking on CNN to … Continue reading
Posted in Conservatives, Gaza, Israel, Journalism, Liberal, Libertarian, Politics, Populism
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Populism vs Neoconservatism (12-17-23)
01:00 Populism is popular but ineffective, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=15365410:00 What is populism? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism14:30 The rise of modern populism – Takis S. Pappas, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMNwUh0X5eI33:40 How to understand power – Eric Liu, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_Eutci7ack53:00 Elliott Blatt goes to a sports bar 55:00 Colin Liddell joins … Continue reading
Populism, Neoconservatism & Lessons in the Application of Power
I’m a simple man who likes simple things like truth. Here is one truth as I see it — populism is usually popular but rarely gets anything done, while neoconservatism is unpopular but gets much accomplished (such as the disastrous … Continue reading
Posted in Adventist, Neoconservatives, Populism
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Ideology of Anti-populism & the Administrative State
In 2021, Stephen Turner wrote an essay called Ideology of Anti-populism & the Administrative State: The people, the state, and expertise form an unstable triad, and relating the three in a coherent way, either institutionally or theoretically, is ultimately not … Continue reading
Posted in Populism
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