Thomas Frank Quotes - Page 3

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• The great fear that hung over the business community in the 1970s was death by regulation, and the great goal of the conservative movement, as it rose to triumph in the 1980s, was to remove that threat - to keep OSHA, the EPA, and the FTC from choking off entrepreneurship with their infernal meddling in the marketplace.

  Thomas Frank

  Business, Goal, Rose

  "Wrecking, Wrecking, Wrecked" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. Ocotber 30, 2008.

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• When you take somebody's quote out of context, which happens all the time, nobody's ever going to go and do the research on their own and figure out that you got it wrong.

  Thomas Frank

  Research, Figures, Happens

  Interview with Sam Adams, www.avclub.com. February 18, 2011.

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• Republicans run the machine when it's their turn, and then hand the wheel over to Democrats when the public has had enough.

  Thomas Frank

  Running, Hands, Had Enough

  "Welcome to the Blagosphere" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 17, 2009.

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• A lot of populists after populism died just became socialists. At the beginning of the 20th century, socialism looked like it was going to take off. It didn't, of course, but a lot of people thought it was going to.

  Thomas Frank

  People, Socialism, Century

  Interview with Sam Adams, www.avclub.com. February 18, 2011.

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• There is much to dislike about President Obama's approach to the financial crisis. But opposition, it seems, will have to come from somewhere other than conservatism. The party out of power is also a party out of touch.

  Thomas Frank

  Party, President, Financial

  "Conservatives and Their Pity Parties" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 4, 2009.

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• In America, we no longer have an institutionalized, organized way of calling business to task - of taking them to account for what they've done - and this is especially true in the cultural realm.

  Thomas Frank

  America, Tasks, Calling

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• During the financial crisis and bailouts of 2008, it probably occurred to very few average people that we were entering a period of hardship for billionaires.

  Thomas Frank

  Average, People, Entering

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• One of the things I keep coming back to in my writing is that society doesn't work on this mirror principle - you don't have an exact replica on the left of what you have on the right. It just doesn't work that way.

  Thomas Frank

  Writing, Mirrors, Principles

  Interview with Sam Adams, www.avclub.com. February 18, 2011.

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• Apparently, there is no bad economic turn a conservative cannot do unto his buddy in the working class, as long as cultural solidarity has been cemented over a beer.

  Thomas Frank

  Beer, Class, Long

  Thomas Frank (2007). “What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America”, p.118, Macmillan

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• Vote to stand tall against terrorists ; receive Social Security privatization . Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes , in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.

  Thomas Frank

  Blow, Order, Vote

  Thomas Frank (2007). “What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America”, p.7, Macmillan

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• People are born in a certain place, and in a certain society. I don't mean to sound like a determinist, but to think we're entirely free to do whatever we want betrays a certain class perspective. For most people who have to work for a living, and work at jobs under conditions they may not like, it's just not simple when it comes to freedom.

  Thomas Frank

  Jobs, Betrayal, Mean

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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.

  Thomas Frank

  Real, War, Party

  "What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America". Book by Thomas Frank, April 1, 2007.

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• What becomes fascinating is the way the culture industry doesn't deny it and doesn't try to mitigate it, but tries to sell its products as a way of liberating oneself.

  Thomas Frank

  Ethos, Trying, Culture

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• These days, of course, the focus of talk about popular liberation through products is mostly associated with the Internet. I've been collecting computer ads and ads dealing with Internet industries.

  Thomas Frank

  Focus, Computer, Internet

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• We are watching industries crumble, Wall Street firms disappear, unemployment spike, and unprecedented government intervention. And our designated opinion leaders want to know: Is Obama up this week? Is he down? And is his leadership style more like Bill Clinton's, or Abraham Lincoln's?

  Thomas Frank

  Wall, Government, Opinion Leaders

  "Bipartisanship Is a Silly Beltway Obsession" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 22, 2009.

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• 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 it designates must be cultivated. The vibrant, we believe, is what makes certain cities flourish.

  Thomas Frank

  Believe, Mean, Cities

  John Summers, Chris Lehmann, Thomas Frank (2014). “No Future for You: Salvos from the Baffler”, p.110, MIT Press

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• The only truly individualistic health-care choice - where you receive care that is unpolluted by anyone else’s funds - is to forgo insurance altogether, paying out-of-pocket for health services as you need them.

  Thomas Frank

  Choices, Pockets, Needs

  "Why Democrats Are Losing on Health Care" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 18, 2009.

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• The pursuit of the vibrant seems to be the universal job description of the nation's city planners nowadays. It is also part of the Obama administration's economic recovery strategy for the nation.

  Thomas Frank

  Jobs, Recovery, Cities

  John Summers, Chris Lehmann, Thomas Frank (2014). “No Future for You: Salvos from the Baffler”, p.110, MIT Press

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• The revival of the Right is as extraordinary as it would be if the public had demanded dozens of new nuclear plants in the days after the Three Mile Island disaster; if we had reacted to Watergate by making Richard Nixon a national hero.

  Thomas Frank

  Hero, Islands, Would Be

  Thomas Frank (2012). “Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right”, p.11, Macmillan

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• There are few things in politics more annoying than the Right's utter conviction that it owns the patent on the word 'freedom' that when its leaders stand up for the rights of banks to be unregulated or capital gains to be untaxed, that it is actually and obviously standing up for human liberty, the noblest cause of them all.

  Thomas Frank

  Rights, Leader, Liberty

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• There is something uniquely depressing about the fact that the National Portrait Gallery’s version of the Barack Obama “Hope” poster previously belonged to a pair of lobbyists. Depressing because Mr. Obama’s Washington was not supposed to be the lobbyists’ Washington, the place we learned to despise during the last administration.

  Thomas Frank

  Depressing, Portraits, Lobbyists

  "Obama and the K Street Set" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 30, 2009.

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• Under the administration of George W. Bush, you will recall, federal spending grew pretty significantly. At the same time, the number of people directly employed by the federal government shrank. One of the factors that explained the difference was contracting.

  Thomas Frank

  Government, Differences, Numbers

  "Obama Takes On Market-Based Government" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 11, 2009.

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• While Democrats fussed with the details of health care reforms, conservatives spent months telling the nation that the real issue is freedom, that what's on the line is American liberty itself.

  Thomas Frank

  Real, Issues, Liberty

  "The Left Should Reclaim ‘Freedom’" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 16, 2009.

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• Yes, Democrats can prove that America pays more for health care than other countries; yes, they have won the dispute that private health insurance is needlessly expensive. But what they've lost is the argument that we are a society.

  Thomas Frank

  Country, America, Care

  "Why Democrats Are Losing on Health Care" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 18, 2009.

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• Whereas liberals are thought to erupt self-righteously whenever they feel like it, conservatives believe that they themselves are never permitted to say what they really think.

  Thomas Frank

  Believe, Thinking, Self

  Thomas Frank (2007). “What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America”, p.126, Macmillan

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