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Quote by Thomas Frank

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What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America

This book examines the political transformation of Kansas, a historically populist and progressive state, into a stronghold of conservative Republicanism. The author investigates the cultural and economic factors that led many middle- and working-class Americans to vote against their apparent economic interests, aligning instead with conservative stances on social issues such as abortion, gun rights, and religion. Through historical context and contemporary examples, the work critiques the strategies of both major political parties and offers a provocative thesis about the realignment of American political loyalties. more

Author

Thomas Frank
Thomas Frank

Thomas Frank, born on March 21, 1965, is a renowned American journalist. His career began at The Washington Post, and later he became a staff writer for The New Yorker. Frank is known for his profound insights into American politics and society, often exploring issues of economic inequality, political corruption, and media ethics in his work. more

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“[The right] may never bring prayer back to schools, but it has rescued all manner of rightwing economic nostrums from history's dustbins. Having rolled back the landmark economic reforms of the sixties (the war on poverty) and those of the thirties (labor law, agricultural price supports, banking regulation), its leaders now turn their guns on the accomplishments of the earliest years of progressivism (Woodrow Wilson's estate tax; Theodore Roosevelt's anti-trust measures). With a little more effort, the backlash may well repeal the entire twentieth century.”

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“They, the conservatives, are the real outsides, they tell us, gazing with disgust upon the ludicrous manners of the high and mighty. Or, they tell us, they are rough-and-ready proles, laughing along with us at the efforts of our social "betters" to reform and improve us. That they are often, in fact, people of privilege doing their utmost to boost the fortunes of a political party that is the traditional tool of the privileged is a contradiction that does not trouble them.”

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“The great goal of the backlash is to nurture a cultural class war, and the first step in doing so, as we have seen, is to deny the economic basis of social class. After all, you can hardly deride liberals as society's "elite" or present the GOP as the party of the common man if you acknowledge the existence of the corporate world - the power that creates the nation's real elite, that dominates its real class system, and that wields the Republican Party as its personal political sidearm.”

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