Defining Values in American Politics - Thomas Frank

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Date/Time:Wednesday, 08 Feb 2006 at 8:00 pm
Location:Sun Room, Memorial Union
Cost:Free
Contact:
Phone:515-294-9934
Channel:Lecture Series
Categories:Lectures
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Thomas Frank is the author of What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America?, and One Market Under God. He received a doctorate in History from the University of Chicago with his dissertation, "The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism," which became a national bestseller. He was also founding editor of The Baffler.Part of the National Affairs Series.

Book Description
One of "our most insightful social observers"* cracks the great political mystery of our time: how conservatism, once a marker of class privilege, became the creed of millions of ordinary Americans

With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank turns his eye on what he calls the "thirty-year backlash"-the populist revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment. The high point of that backlash is the Republican Party's success in building the most unnatural of alliances: between blue-collar Midwesterners and Wall Street business interests, workers and bosses, populists and right-wingers.

In asking "what 's the matter with Kansas?"-how a place famous for its radicalism became one of the most conservative states in the union-Frank, a native Kansan and onetime Republican, seeks to answer some broader American riddles: Why do so many of us vote against our economic interests? Where's the outrage at corporate manipulators? And whatever happened to middle-American progressivism? The questions are urgent as well as provocative. Frank answers them by examining pop conservatism-the bestsellers, the radio talk shows, the vicious political combat-and showing how our long culture wars have left us with an electorate far more concerned with their leaders' "values" and down-home qualities than with their stands on hard questions of policy.

A brilliant analysis-and funny to boot-What's the Matter with Kansas? presents a critical assessment of who we are, while telling a remarkable story of how a group of frat boys, lawyers, and CEOs came to convince a nation that they spoke on behalf of the People.

*Los Angeles Times