Conservatives and libertarians, you can skip this post.

The rest of you: If you are at all like me, one of the questions that may plague you is WHY (why oh why oh why) does so much of "middle America" vote Republican when doing so is clearly against their economic interest. To that end, permit me to recommend Thomas Frank’s What’s The Matter With Kansas?. I just finished reading it, and it is very readable and humorous and informative. Not much in it by way of solutions, but as soon as we recognize the problem, then we can build a bridge to the solution.