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"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: Safety
Safe for Whom: The Coalition Politics of Safety Claims in 2026
The word “safety” ends arguments. That is its function in 2026, and it performs that function across every domain of contested expert authority. To invoke safety is to convert a coalition’s preferred conclusion into a moral imperative, to reclassify dissent … Continue reading
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When I Hear People with Power Abuse “Safety,” I Reach for My Keyboard
There is a tell. When powerful institutions want to expand their authority, restrict your choices, suppress a competing viewpoint, or insulate a decision from challenge, they reach for one word before any other. The word is “safety”. It ends arguments. … Continue reading
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When No One Calls It a Safety Problem
A previous essay mapped ten ways safety is invoked by powerful institutions against people who cannot push back. This essay maps the mirror image: ten ways safety is not invoked when it should be, because the dominant coalition has decided … Continue reading
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Safety Is the Enforcement Language of a Hero System
Every argument about safety is also an argument about something else. It is an argument about what kind of person deserves protection, what kind of social order is worth preserving, and what vision of human flourishing justifies the cost of … Continue reading
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Ten Zero-Sum Safety Determinations in 2026 America
A zero-sum safety determination is a specific kind of policy decision. It is not merely contested. It is structurally inverted: the identical outcome, the same door open or closed, the same person housed in the same facility, the same word … Continue reading
What Feels Dangerous Down Here
This is an essay about safety for Americans who can’t spell “safety.” There is a class of American for whom the word safety lands as a provocation. Not because they do not want to be safe. They want it more … Continue reading
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