A state in "free fall", A book about the end of the American dream. Junk stores.Corn fell from 6 a bushel in 1996 to 2.25 in 1999.

The first four chapters of this book are very good, but the author should have quit while he was ahead. Seems to me the last part of the book is just filler or more suited to a travelouge. ( )

The end notes make it a bit labor-intensive but it is an excellent, concise explanation of why working-class people voted with the establishment. ( )

Nothing. They’re just being used. That’s the conclusion Frank reaches when he investigates why the status quo-busting citizens of his home state – once the nation’s pioneering progressive populists – now are the epicenter of right-wing Republican reactionaries. Frank writes of how groups of Kansans in their quest for moral values are basically being used to advance the cause of corporate power. There’s a lot in this book I’m uncomfortable with in it’s stereotypical depictions and not well justified conclusions, but for the most part Frank does solid investigation and puts a lot of compassion into the story of Kansas.

“Cupcake Land is a metropolis built entirely according to the developer’s plan, without the interference of angry proles or ethnic pols as in nearby Kansas City. Cupcake Land encourages no culture but that which increases property values; supports no learning but that which burnishes the brand; hears no opinions but those that will fatten the cupcake elite; tolerates no rebellion but that expressed in haircuts and piercings and alternative rock. You know what it’s like even though you haven’t been there. Smooth jazz. Hallmark cards. Applebees. Corporate Woods. “ – p. 49

“Ironically, the farm is where Americans learned their first lessons in the pitfalls of laissez-faire economics a hundred years ago. Farming is a field uniquely unsuited to the freewheeling whirl of the open market. There are millions of farmers, and they are naturally disorganized; they can’t coordinate their plans with one another. Not only are they easily victimized by powerful middlemen (as they were by the railroads in the Populists’ day), but when they find themselves in a tough situation – when, say, the price they are getting for wheat is low – farmers do not have an option of cutting back production, as every other industry does. Instead, each of those millions of farmers works harder, competes better, becomes more efficient, cranks out more of the commodity in question … and thus makes the glut even worse and pushes the prices still lower. This is called an ‘overproduction trap,’ and it can only be overcome by a suspension of competition through government intervention. Such intervention is what the Populists and the farmers’ unions fought for decades to secure; it finally came with the New Deal, which brought price supports and acreage set-asides and loan guarantees. For agribusiness, however, farm overproduction is the ideal situation. From their perspective, lower farm prices means higher profits and even greater power in the marketplace. Overproduction and all-out competition between farmers are thus to be encouraged by all available political means.” – 64

“…to believe that liberalism is all-powerful gets conservative lawmakers off the hook for their flagrant failure to make headway in the culture wars, but it also makes for a singularly negative and depressing movement culture. To be a populist conservative is to be a fatalist; to believe in a world where your side will never win; indeed, where your side almost by definition cannot win. Where even the most shattering electoral victories turn out to be hollow, and the liberal stranglehold on life can never be broken.” – 125

“Understanding themselves as victims besieged by a hateful world absolves conservatives of responsibility for what goes on around them. It excuses them for their failures; it justifies the most irresponsible rages; and it allows them, both in politics and in private life, to resolve disputes by pointing their fingers at the outside world and blaming it all on depraved liberal elite.” -159

“When markets flex their muscles, it is productive, organic, democratic; when government know-it-alls take the wheel, power becomes destructive, top-down, arbitrary, and tyrannical.” - 165

“The deafness of the conservative rank and file to the patent insincerity of their leaders is one of the true cultural marvels of the Great Backlash. It extends from the local level to the highest heights, from clear-eyed city council aspirant to George W. Bush, a man so ham-handed in his invocations of the Lord that he occasionally slips into blasphemy. Indeed, even as conservatives routinely mock Democrats for faking their religious sentiment, they themselves plainly feel so exempt from such criticism that they wander blithely in and out of the land of hypocrisy, never pausing to wonder if their followers are paying attention.”

“American conservatism depends for its continued dominance and even for its very existence on people never making certain mental connections about the world, connections that until recently were treated as obvious or self-evident everywhere on the planet. For example, the connection between mass culture, most of which conservatives hate, and laissez-faire capitalism, which they adore without reservation. Or between the small towns they profess to love and the market forces that are slowly grinding those small towns back into red-state dust – which forces they praise in the most exalted terms.” -248 ( )

This phenomenal book explores how Republican party leaders and big business have conspired to equate conservatism with stands on cultural, not fiscal, issues. Rich's writing is solid, yet surprisingly free of any sweeping value judgments: he lets the facts speak for themselves. He also shows how conservatism is a dead end road, and moreover, how it was intended to be such from the get-go--the best way to keep people energised and supportive is by working them up over issues on which they will never be able to definitively declare victory. "Kansas" is an interesting and thought-provoking read from start to finish, which is why I highly recommend that you read it, too.