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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:
- 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: A Life 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
- The Self-Hating Jew
- The Alliance Theory in the Academy
- The Borrowed Robe: How Antisemitism Dresses in Each Age’s Virtue
- A Place For You
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: Elites
Moral Grammars of American Elite Life: Four Cities and Four Accounts of Legitimate Influence
From a distance, American elite life looks like one culture. Up close it splits into rival moral orders, and the clearest fault lines run between cities. New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington each reward a different virtue, punish … Continue reading
Posted in Elites, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Washington D.C.
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The Outside Auditor: Steven Brill and the Engineering of Elite Transparency
Steven Brill (b. 1950) belongs to a generation of entrepreneurs who treated reporting as an instrument for restructuring elite systems rather than as a craft of observation alone. Across five decades he moved among media, law, technology, public policy, and … Continue reading
Posted in Elites, Expertise, Journalism, Law
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The Two-Tier Country: How American Elites Live Inside the Rules They Write for You
A Note on Scope This essay does not argue that elite institutions are corrupt. Corruption is the wrong frame. The frame is sociological. American elites operate inside a system in which formal rules are universal and operational rules are stratified … Continue reading
Ten Convenient Beliefs For Leaders At The Counsel On Foreign Relations
Stephen Turner’s convenient beliefs are operating at full institutional speed in the Council on Foreign Relations’ New York ballroom, Washington offices, Foreign Affairs editorial meetings, and the private briefing rooms right now. With the U.S.-Israeli campaign in its second month, … Continue reading
Stephen Turner on Elite Expert Efforts to Curate the Online World
For most of the twentieth century, elite institutions did not need to hide dissent. They could afford to ignore it. The New York Times, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Brookings Institution derived their authority from prestige, access, and … Continue reading
Posted in Censorship, Elites, Expertise, Stephen Turner
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Robert Pape, Jacob Siegel, Edward Fishman & The Pantomime Of Profundity
University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape, Tablet magazine essayist Jacob Siegel, and Chokepoints author Edward Fishman do not compete for authority by saying they want status. They compete by invoking the languages of empirical rigor, regime-level historical theory, and … Continue reading
Posted in Elites, Expertise, Jacob Siegel, Robert Pape
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Why do elites love the word ‘mechanism’?
Because it does a lot of social work for them. First, “mechanism” signals scientific seriousness without having to prove it. If you say “there’s a mechanism here,” you’re borrowing prestige from fields like biology, economics, and engineering. You sound like … Continue reading
Posted in Elites
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Elites Hate Power & Discretion In The Hands Of Non-Elites
Michael O’Hanlon is “chair in defence and strategy at the Brookings Institution and the author of ‘To Dare Mighty Things: US Defense Strategy Since the Revolution’.” He writes for the FT: “Congress must not give Trump a blank cheque for … Continue reading
Posted in Elites
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The Jurisdictional Wars: Alliance Theory and the Battle for Professional Managerial Class Authority
Elites within the professional managerial class (PMC) do not compete for authority by openly admitting they seek power and status. They compete by invoking moral and ethical languages that frame their claims as fidelity to social justice, loyalty to equity … Continue reading
Posted in Elites
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Genre Errors: Why the Wrong Rulebook Ruins Everything
Football players follow the rules of football. This is not a profound observation on a pitch. Everyone there already knows it. But move from the field to culture, politics, and media, and the obvious evaporates. We judge people by the … Continue reading