What's the Matter With Kansas?

From one sobering political reality blog to another.

Kansas seems to be having a lot of problems with an extreme brand of conservatism in the last few decades.

This used to be a relatively progressive state. John Brown was from Kansas. So was one of the better and more respectable presidents of the modern era  Dwight D. Eisenhower.

But things have changed. Radically.

Or, perhaps, I should be more specific: things took a very reactionary turn in the state of Kansas. So bad did it get, that historian Thomas Frank wrote an entire book about it in 2004, which was titled "What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America". Tellingly, the book was titled "What's the Matter with America? in Great Britain and Australia.

Frank explains just how reactionary Kansas has gotten:

"Out here the gravity of discontent pulls in only one direction: to the right, to the right, further to the right. Strip today's Kansans of their job security, and they head out to become registered Republicans. Push them off their land, and next thing you know they're protesting in front of abortion clinics. Squander their life savings on manicures for the CEO, and there's a good chance they'll join the John Birch Society. But ask them about the remedies their ancestors proposed (unions, antitrust, public ownership), and you might as well be referring to the days when knighthood was in flower."

Nowadays, Kansas has become one of the most consistently staunchly conservative states in the nation, growing more reliably pro-Republican than much of the "Solid South", where at least some states (Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee in 1992 and 1996, Georgia in 1976, 1980, and 1992, Florida and Virginia in 2008 and 2012, North Carolina in 2008). In fact, you have to go all the way back to the 1964 election, when Lyndon B. Johnson defeated Republican Barry Goldwater, for the last time that Kansas voted for a Democrat in the race for the White House.

So, it's perhaps no wonder that the right to a truly decent education is under threat there. Plus, since the new brand of conservatism is "the South" has pushed the American political agenda for decades now, it should not be surprising that Kansas, which again, is one of the most conservative states in the nation on almost every issue nowadays, should wind up being a testing place, and thus a political and legal battleground state, for all sorts of cooky and unfortunate ideas.

Case in point, there is serious debate there as to just how much funding public education should get. And, also rather predictably, the entire rest of the nation.

Click the below link and read this article for specifics on this case:


"Kansas Court Could Kill the Right to a Decent Public Education"  January 9, 2014

http://billmoyers.com/2014/01/09/kansas-court-could-kill-the-right-to-a-decent-public-education/