Thomas Frank
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male
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The United States
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Politics, History
about this author
Thomas Frank is the author of What’s the Matter with Kansas? and One Market Under God. The founding editor of The Baffler and a contributing editor at Harper’s, he is also The Wall Street Journal’s newest weekly columnist. He has received a Lannan award and been a guest columnist for The New York Times. Frank lives in Washington, D.C.
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interviews
October 2008,
Thomas Frank
"We have lots of theories about what's wrong with Washington, but they tend to be the theories developed by the right back in the 1970s about liberals. Liberalism is the root of all evil, and when someone does something wrong it is because they've become more liberal. But that theory really doesn't hold water, and very obviously so. My object was to come up with the theory for the conservative state — what made it tick. " ...More
"We have lots of theories about what's wrong with Washington, but they tend to be the theories developed by the right back in the 1970s about liberals. Liberalism is the root of all evil, and when someone does something wrong it is because they've become more liberal. But that theory really doesn't hold water, and very obviously so. My object was to come up with the theory for the conservative state — what made it tick. " ...More
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"But such people (Moderate Conservatives) aren't liberal. What they are is corporate. Their habits and opinions owe far more to the standards of courtesy and taste that prevail within the white-collar world than they do to Franklin Roosevelt and the United Mine Workers. We live in a time, after all, when hard-nosed bosses compose awestruck disquisitions on the nature of 'change,' punk rockers dispense leadership secrets, shallow profundities about authenticity sell luxury cars, tech billionaires build rock'n'roll musuems, management theorists ponder the nature of coolness, and a former lyricist fro the Grateful Dead hail the dawn of New Economy capitalism from the heights of Davos. Coversvatives may not understand why, but business culture had melded with counterculture for reasons having a great deal to do with business culture's usual priority - profit."
— Thomas Frank
— Thomas Frank
"...libertarianism is good because it helps conservatives pass off a patently probusiness political agenda as a noble bid for human freedom. Whatever we may think of libertarianism as a set of ideas, practically speaking, it is a doctrine that owes its visibility to the obvious charms it holds for the wealthy and the powerful. The reason we have so many well-funded libertarians in American these days is not because libertarianism suddenly acquired an enormous grassroots following, but because it appeals to those who are able to fund ideas. Like social Darwinism and Christian Science before it, libertarianism flatters the successful and rationalizes their core beliefs about the world. They warm to the libertarian idea that taxation is theft because they themselves don’t like to pay taxes. They fancy the libertarian notion that regulation is communist because they themselves find regulation intrusive and annoying. Libertarianism is a politics born to be subsidized. In the “free market of ideas,” it is a sure winner."
— Thomas Frank (The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule)
— Thomas Frank (The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule)
"Corruption is uniquely reprehensible in a democracy because it violates the system's first principle, which we all learned back in the sunshiny days of elementary school: that the government exist to serve the public, not particular companies or individuals or even elected officials. "
— Thomas Frank (The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule)
— Thomas Frank (The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule)
