Posted on 07/10/2012 4:19:14 AM PDT by lbryce
WHO is happier about life — liberals or conservatives? The answer might seem straightforward. After all, there is an entire academic literature in the social sciences dedicated to showing conservatives as naturally authoritarian, dogmatic, intolerant of ambiguity, fearful of threat and loss, low in self-esteem and uncomfortable with complex modes of thinking. And it was the candidate Barack Obama in 2008 who infamously labeled blue-collar voters “bitter,” as they “cling to guns or religion.” Obviously, liberals must be happier, right?
Wrong. Scholars on both the left and right have studied this question extensively, and have reached a consensus that it is conservatives who possess the happiness edge. Many data sets show this. For example, the Pew Research Center in 2006 reported that conservative Republicans were 68 percent more likely than liberal Democrats to say they were “very happy” about their lives. This pattern has persisted for decades. The question isn’t whether this is true, but why.
Many conservatives favor an explanation focusing on lifestyle differences, such as marriage and faith. They note that most conservatives are married; most liberals are not. (The percentages are 53 percent to 33 percent, according to my calculations using data from the 2004 General Social Survey, and almost none of the gap is due to the fact that liberals tend to be younger than conservatives.) Marriage and happiness go together. If two people are demographically the same but one is married and the other is not, the married person will be 18 percentage points more likely to say he or she is very happy than the unmarried person.
The story on religion is much the same. According to the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, conservatives who practice a faith outnumber religious liberals in America nearly four to one. And the link to happiness?
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Imagine seeing a book entitled "Why Jews are Superior to Gentiles" by Alois Schicklgruber aka Adolf Hitler. You'd either dismiss the book's premise out right due to the notoriety of the author or might just might peruse through a few pages simply out of a sense of curious bewilderment, eventually not only being insulted but getting angry, angry at yourself for being such a fool into reading a book with a title as ridiculous as the one you just read. The same thing goes just as easily for the slimes. If Conservatives are happier (for myriad of superior reasons ) the Slimes will find some pernicious pathological underpinning for it.
Perhaps this man wants a government happiness program- all they need is some ‘funding’ and they can decrease the ‘happiness gap’
The innovators of the left see happiness as something to be achieved, accomplished or acquired.
Conservatives see happiness as a by-product of right living.
As the leftist mind sees morals as changing, innovated by rationalism and situational rather than enduring, they have an unfixed standard that their lives are constantly measured against. This results in confusion and insecurity whose accompanying mental states do not include plain happiness.
Conservatives are happier because they are not as mentally ill as liberals. I would bet that on average, a conservative is far more mentally stable. Not as given to extremes in temperament as liberals.
Yeah, it's called "projection".
Because liberals are born miserable, I know plenty of them. They are unhappy by birth, and they try to rationalize their unhappiness by inventing a terrible world that Government needs to fix.
Gag me with a spoon!
Are we “Conservative, THEREFOR happy”? Or are we “Conservative AND happy?” Correlation does not mean causation.
TC
You can brand me bitter, uneducated, racist and insecure. You can take my money, my pride in country and my health but one thing that is not for your taking is my love for Faith and for the true source of my individual rights, God.
I don't wrap myself in the Flag but I hoist it to the heavens for there is not a single symbol more recognized in this world as representing Freedom.
A true Patriot reacts to tyranny and injustice with not hatred as insinuated but with vigorous voice and knowledge. One does not give into pursuits of disinformation by any powers of government or party, indeed, a true patriot becomes the town crier.
I am not a fanatic nor an ideologue. I understand this land is not for my grave but for my memories lived through my children and theirs. It is in this understanding I recognize that human frailty allows for decisions that seemingly advance this notion but miserably fail in practice. It is to this I gain the wisdom and fortitude to not only respond to these doctrines of unintended consequences but to insure their disposal.
And in the end, if I can leave with valor and cause, I will gaze upon my Country finally at peace and with love.
I’ve lived in Manhattan, and people there are definitely not happy.
Just make a law that you must be happy!?!?!??!
People who believe in rules and respect for rules, live better, are happier, than people who accept chaos.
Wow, bulletin...
Best statement I've read today.
They are unable to read a valid conclusion for the same reason they are less happy.
They are starting from an assumption not based in reality, ie, a lie. That lie is “you can be as gods”, ie, Humanism.
When you assume a lie is true, then procede to examine the evidence from that basis, only by accident will you ever reach a valid conclusion.
"Liberalism" in a nutshell! We can make humanity perfect if we make the environment and society perfect. It just requires that the most enlightened people be given enough power to impose that perfection on everyone else.
It’s hard to be happy when you absolutely hate your Country and have no God.
Pray for America
I fail to see why many of the postings here assume that the author of the article is a liberal, when his affiliation rather clearly indicates the likelihood that he is himself conservative. He even tweaks or teases normal Times readers at the end of the column.
So, are conservatives happy because of their faith and their more stable marriages, or do they have faith and happy marriages because they are already of a certain personality type?
I am sure that there is feedback between cause and effect here. There also another difference: in philosophy, conservatives admire self-reliance, which is the ideal condition of an adult. Liberals rationalize dependency, which is the condition of immaturity: at its most extreme, it is the condition of an infant, who is totally helpless, cries for its needs to be fulfilled by others, and produces nothing except bowel movements, noise, and regurgitated, partly curdled milk.
Liberals tend to be fixated at immaturity. Freud would say, this explains why many of them are gay. They have never quite completed the growth to maturity.
There is a giant feedback here of really world-class significance, and that is that a population of self-reliant people with stable families, happy and with low crime-rates, will be successful and productive and rich. A population of cranky, immature, unstable whiners who rationalize crime and believe in no standards (“moral absolutes”), who condemn their offspring to unstable, nonstandard parenting, cannot possibly be very productive, rich, or happy.
Greg Gutfeld says that liberals are always unhappy because they read the New York Times.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.