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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:
- 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
- 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
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: Buffered
Mark Halperin: For Millions Of Americans, The Election Of Donald Trump Is The Worst Thing To Ever Happen To Them.
The intensity of the reaction to Donald Trump suggests that for many Americans, the injury is primarily symbolic rather than material. When people describe his presidency as a personal catastrophe, they are often describing a collapse of the cultural hero … Continue reading
Terror in Sydney: Analyzing the “Chanukah by the Sea” Massacre
01:00 Bondi shooting,https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/12/14/world/sydney-bondi-beach-shooting03:00 Terror in Sydney: Analyzing the “Chanukah by the Sea” Massacre, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=16539704:00 Bondi terror video, https://x.com/ClayTravis/status/200019225984575521616:00 Live From Bondi’s Flourishing Jewish Community (11-24-21), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEYhQsNRAlM19:00 Live from Sydney, it’s Friday Morning Live! (11-19-21), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m11xyqD9M_U35:00 When Billings, Montana celebrated Hanukkah, … Continue reading
Interaction Ritual Chains (2005)
This Randall Collins classic book gives you a clean sociological bridge between Charles Taylor’s porous identity and buffered identity. It’s not metaphysics. It’s what happens to people when the ritual energy dries up or concentrates. Porous selves come out of … Continue reading
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The Relational Imperative with Kenneth Gergen
On ChatGPT’s recommendation, I dove into the work of Kenneth J. Gergen. He wrote The Relational Imperative. He laments the individual focus of modernity but he seems completely oblivious to this reality is a consequence of liberalism and the Enlightenment. … Continue reading
Why Are People So Emotionally Invested In Trump’s White House Renovations?
What matters most to me is outside of me. I largely matter to the extent I am part of something bigger than myself — such as being a part of the Jewish people, the American people, and a certain traditional … Continue reading
Internal Pride Mirrors External Validation – You Can’t Generate Your Own Pride
From a 2018 paper: Invariances in the architecture of pride across small-scale societies It has been proposed that one key function of pride is to guide behavior in ways that would increase others’ valuation of the individual. To incline choice, … Continue reading
Posted in Buffered, Porous, Psychology
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How do Nathaniel Branden’s teachings about self-esteem map on to the buffered identity?
ChatGPT says: Nathaniel Branden’s work on self-esteem and Charles Taylor’s notion of the buffered identity can be mapped together in interesting ways—they both deal with how modern selves structure their experience of the world, but from different angles. 1. Branden’s … Continue reading