Frank-ly where's the logic

Whats the matter with Kansas is an entertaining book, much the way Moore is an entertaining filmmaker. If your anything short of an uber liberal you see where I'm going with this.

Last week in class I mentioned european cleavages as an explanation of Kansas and that sounded ridiculous, but with a little explanation it's a heck of a lot more logical than Franks argument.

Chapter 11 begins with Frank admitting that there ARE sober explanations for Kansas, and then he goes to detail those explanations ("crack pot godliness" top of pg 217).

So here's the breakdown of my argument ( it comes from Gallagher Laver Mair Modern Europe 2006)

These are the major european cleavages (social divides), but I would argue these are major cleavage issues anywhere.

Center- Periphery Those who promote the dominant culture -vs- those who prefer to preserve moral independence and autonomy.

Church-State Those who believe that the gov't and the church have similar goals (maintaining national morals) -vs- those who believe in strong seperation of church and state.

Rural- Urban self explanatory

Primary economy- Secondary economy those who produce good -vs service/upgrading/education/ gov't et cetera.

Employer - Worker self employed/ employers -vs- employees

Now lets think about what side of these rifts republicans likely identify more with.
Center, Church, Rural, Primary economy, employer.

Now lets think about Kansas
Center, curch, rural, primary economy, mixed (employer-worker)

I suspect someone will comment on the employer worker cleavage, but heres the thing, drive to the boondocks sometime (like say fort McCoy, WI located between Sparta and Tomah where I resided for 17 months.) you know what you'll see, a Wal-mart, a shit load of churches and bars and stores with names like "bob's jeans" "Tomah local knicks and knacks," why? No big business (except wal mart) is going to open up shop in a low income low population town. One of the first steps in starting a franchise is analysing the population, just try and find a chipotle in a farm town.