Concerns about the size and role of government are what seem to leave reformers stammering and speechless in town-hall meetings. The right wants to have a debate over fundamental principles; elected Democrats seem incapable of giving it to them. — Thomas Frank Copy Share Image
“above all, intellectual. Anti-intellectualism is one of the grand unifying themes of the backlash, the mutant strain of class war that underpins so many of Kansas’s otherwise random-seeming grievances. Contemporary conservatism holds as a key article of faith that it is fruitless to scrutinize the business pages for clues about the way the world works. We do not labor under… — Thomas Frank Copy Share
The only truly individualistic health-care choice - where you receive care that is unpolluted by anyone else's funds - is to forgo insurance altogether,… — Thomas Frank Copy Share Image
Conservatism is not a doctrine of contentment. Not a doctrine for the satisfied and the smug. It's a politics that's at war with the… — Thomas Frank Copy Share Image
A president aiming for 'Great' or 'Near Great' status must do more. He must give lots of interviews, make records accessible, and heap the… — Thomas Frank Copy Share Image
“Innovation liberalism is "a liberalism of the rich," to use the straightforward phrase of local labor leader Harris Gruman. This doctrine has no patience with the idea that everyone should share in society's wealth. What Massachusetts liberals pine for, by and large, is a more perfect meritocracy--a system where everyone gets an equal chance and the truly talented get to… — Thomas Frank Copy Share
Media bias has been a favorite theme of the Right for decades, of course. — Thomas Frank Copy Share Image
Presidential legacies are valuable things, too valuable to be left up to historians. — Thomas Frank Copy Share Image
A lot of populists after populism died just became socialists. At the beginning of the 20th century, socialism looked like it was going to… — Thomas Frank Copy Share Image
“And so the catastrophe of 1929–33 did to the certainties of laissez-faire economics what science did to nineteenth-century religion and what the slaughter of World War I did to old-fashioned patriotism: it knocked out the props. “Everything nailed down is coming loose,” people used to say back then: The Depression made business leaders into laughingstocks and transformed economic orthodoxy into… — Thomas Frank Copy Share
Vibrancy is so universally desirable, so totemic in its powers, that even though we aren't sure what the word means, we know the quality… — Thomas Frank Copy Share Image
Under the administration of George W. Bush, you will recall, federal spending grew pretty significantly. At the same time, the number of people directly… — Thomas Frank Copy Share Image
