What's the Matter With Thomas Frank?

That speck in your brother's eye by J. Peder Zane points out that Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter With Kansas?"

...articulates the self-righteous anger and self-satisfied worldview that infects liberal thought...

[Frank] reminds us that Democrats do stand for something quite far-reaching: the certitude of their own virtue in a wicked world.

Like fire-and-brimstone preachers of old, they are less interested in leading than in warning us about those who might lead us astray. It is a moral vision defined by the negative: We are good because our opponents are evil; believe us because you cannot trust them; we are right because they are wrong.

This mind-set leaves Frank with a gnarly problem: Why have so many forsaken reason to worship false gods? More prosaically, he poses a question that has become a key Democrat talking point: Why do so many working-class Americans vote against their own economic self-interest and support Republicans?

Frank, of course, has little interest in conclusively demonstrating that Republican policies have hurt average Americans -- or why, if this is so, people are moving from blue states to red states. He doesn't attempt to show that such voters would be better off under Democrats. For him it is an article of faith....

Perhaps rafts of his fellow Kansans...do not believe they are as impoverished as Frank maintains. Maybe experience has taught them that the government can't solve all their problems. Or maybe their moral beliefs make cultural issues such as abortion and school prayer paramount in their minds.

Rather than interview a representative sample of these folks to understand their thinking, Frank arrogantly concludes that they suffer "derangement." What else but a mental condition -- and a healthy dollop of ignorance -- could prevent them from seeing Frank's light?

Not that conservatives don't do the same thing, but still, Zane's spot on.