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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: 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: Expertise
Power Determines Claims Of Expertise
Expertise does not operate in a vacuum. It operates within institutions, and institutions answer to coalitions. What a coalition of interests, media organizations, party infrastructure, and reputationally interdependent commentators will recognize as admissible reality shapes what experts are permitted to … Continue reading
Posted in Expertise
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The Coalition Filter: How Admissible Reality Gets Made in 2026
Every expert claim passes through a filter before it reaches public recognition as legitimate knowledge. The filter is not logic, evidence, or even peer review in any pure sense. It is a coalition: a loosely organized but functionally coherent assembly … Continue reading
Posted in Epistemics, Expertise
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“Threats to Democracy”: Elite Rhetoric as Fragmentation Defense
When the American expert class warns that democracy is under threat, it is worth asking precisely which democracy it is defending. The answer, examined carefully, is not the democracy of popular sovereignty, the idea that the people govern themselves through … Continue reading
One War, Three Realities: How Expert Coalitions Build the World They Need
The Iraq War did not fail because the intelligence was wrong, though some of it was. It failed because the system that processes intelligence was designed to produce a specific output, and it produced that output faithfully. The people who … Continue reading
The Cosmic Stakes of the Revolt of the Public
When historians look back at the American elite’s reaction to Donald Trump, the feature that will require the most explanation is not the opposition. Opposition to a disruptive political figure is normal. What will require explanation is the specific quality … Continue reading
The Jurisdictional Wars: Alliance Theory and the Battle for American Information Authority
American high-status actors do not compete for authority by openly saying they want power, prestige, or narrative control. They compete by invoking moral languages that frame their authority as service: protecting democracy from misinformation, defending evidence-based standards, and shielding the … Continue reading
Posted in Censorship, Elites, Expertise
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The Jurisdictional Wars: Alliance Theory and the Battle for Blogospheric Authority
Bloggers, journalists, and experts do not compete for authority by openly saying they want control over public belief. They compete by invoking moral languages that frame their authority as truth-seeking, responsibility, and protection of the public from error. This is … Continue reading
Posted in Blogging, Expertise, Journalism
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The Plumber Standard: Stephen Turner, Habermas, and the Limits of Expert Authority
Stephen Turner’s critique of Jürgen Habermas cuts to the heart of how we understand knowledge, expertise, and democratic life. Habermas argues that expert cultures make genuine democratic discussion impossible. He sees experts as hidden policymakers who operate behind a wall … Continue reading
Posted in Elites, Expertise, Stephen Turner
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The Most Lopsided War I Can Remember
Three weeks into the war, a question keeps surfacing: why has Iran’s retaliation been so underwhelming? The pre-war simulations imagined something far more devastating. Iran had missiles, drones, proxies across the region, and decades of asymmetric doctrine. What the simulations … Continue reading
Gurri’s Avalanche Has No Blueprint
Martin Gurri’s column arrives like the Category 5 hurricane he invokes. The post-Cold War rules-based order was never rules or order, he argues. It was a polite fiction masking American decline and elite self-preservation. Trump has torn the fiction away. … Continue reading
Posted in America, Elites, Expertise, Iran, Martin Gurri, Stephen Turner
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