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Lecture 10, titled Fire and Ice, focused on the political culture of the Great Plains. To begin with, we discussed how the definition of the word "liberal" has changed through time from limiting government and maximizing individual liberties to what we see today. Our government in the U.S. is liberal as a whole, so the definition got changed a little bit. We talked a little bit about Socialism and how the Plains show a few aspects that reflect this idea. Some examples are North Dakota's state bank and mill, Nebraska's state power cooperative, and Saskatchewan being the most Socialist state or province on the Plains. I found that strange at first how Alberta, which is right next to Saskatchewan, is very right-wing. One thing that I have always found a bit confusing was how in North Dakota we elect Republicans to the State House, yet we elect Democrats to the national House. I never really stopped to think about it until Mr. Isern told us that it's so we don't get taxed on the state level, and when the Democrats spend money at the national level a lot of it comes back to us in North Dakota, so we elect whoever will help our situation. We then talked a bit about the history of radicalism on the Plains, whether it is from the left or right. The National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry, Farmer's Alliance, The Nonpartisan League, and the Progressive Party were some of the groups we talked about. They all had some interesting ideas about what should be done with things like the nationalization of railroads. Parrington thought that radical groups like these were good and that people were looking towards the future, but Hofstudter disagreed and said that people were just trying to go back to what the past was like.