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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 world.

Thomas Frank

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Thomas Frank
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: March 21
Historian
Journalist
Kansas City
Missouri
Thomas Carr Frank
War
World
Smug
Conservatism
Contentment
Doctrine
Satisfied
Politics

More quotes by Thomas Frank

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Governing was always difficult for conservatives, but as they return to the opposition, they are rediscovering their skill at blame evasion.
Thomas Frank
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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
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I was in a bad mood when I wrote that.
Thomas Frank
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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
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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
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This aesthetic quality, then, is what politics is all about. It's authenticity that separates winners from losers, good politics from bad, and he-man leader-types from consultant-directed puppet-boys.
Thomas Frank
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People getting their fundamental interests wrong is what American political life is all about.
Thomas Frank
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Joe Klein is the flower of American political journalism, a sharp raconteur who shows traces of the gonzo style that was in vogue when he was honing his craft at Rolling Stone back in the day.
Thomas Frank
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The Obama administration's plan is to have the Federal Reserve regulate banks that might pose a 'systemic risk' if they were to fail.
Thomas Frank
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I was never a fan of Barack Obama's bipartisanship routine.
Thomas Frank
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Above all else stands the burning question of bipartisanship. Whatever else the politicians might say they're about, our news analysts know that this is the true object of the nation's desire, the topic to which those slippery presidential spokesmen need always to be dragged back.
Thomas Frank
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It is always a disappointment to turn from forthright consideration of some subject - whether from the Left or the Right, a poet or a plumber - to the Beltway version, in which the only aspects of the issue that matter are the effects it will have on the fortunes of the two parties and the various men in power.
Thomas Frank
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Every city is either vibrant these days or is working on a plan to attain vibrancy soon. The reason is simple: a city isn't successful - isn't even a city, really - unless it can lay claim to being 'vibrant.'
Thomas Frank
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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
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If your purpose is to understand the clique of people who dominate Washington today, the emails that really matter are the ones being slowly released by WikiLeaks from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton's campaign chair John Podesta.
Thomas Frank
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In the last James Bond movie, the villain was a culture captain, a tycoon of culture, a Murdoch figure. It's not as if people don't know what is going on.
Thomas Frank
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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
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For-profit higher education is today a booming industry, feeding on the student loans handed out to the desperate.
Thomas Frank
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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
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Americans have known about mounting inequality and king-sized Wall Street bonuses for years. But we also had an entire genre of journalism dedicated to brushing the problem off.
Thomas Frank