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Apr
2
Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals
Filed Under conservativism, happiness, liberalism, psychology | Comments Off
Research on happiness shows some interesting conclusions: Parents are happier than those without children and conservatives are happier than liberals.
The numbers aren’t just lower for the left because George W. Bush has been making liberals crazy for the last 8 years. Studies show conservatives have been happier than liberals for 35 years.
The Economist reports about the happiness findings:
Despite this, American parents are much more likely to be happy than non-parents. This is for two reasons, argues Mr (Arthur) Brooks, an economist at Syracuse University. Even if children are irksome now, they lend meaning to life in the long term. And the kind of people who are happy are also more likely to have children. Which leads on to Mr Brooks’s most controversial finding: in America, conservatives are happier than liberals.
Several books have been written about happiness in recent years. Some have tried to discern which nations are the happiest. Many more purport to offer a foolproof guide to self-fulfillment. Others wonder if the obsessive pursuit of happiness is itself making people miserable. Mr Brooks offers something different. He writes only about Americans, thus avoiding the pitfalls of trying to figure out, for example, whether Japanese people mean the same thing as Danes when they say they are happy. And he writes intriguingly about the politics of happiness.
In 2004 Americans who called themselves “conservative” or “very conservative” were nearly twice as likely to tell pollsters they were “very happy” as those who considered themselves “liberal” or “very liberal” (44% versus 25%). One might think this was because liberals were made wretched by George Bush. But the data show that American conservatives have been consistently happier than liberals for at least 35 years.
This is not because they are richer; they are not. Mr Brooks thinks three factors are important. Conservatives are twice as likely as liberals to be married and twice as likely to attend church every week. Married, religious people are more likely than secular singles to be happy. They are also more likely to have children, which makes Mr Brooks confident that the next generation will be at least as happy as the current one.
Some factors are in play in discovering happiness.
Religion makes people happier, whether they are liberal or conservative.
Also, ideology plays an important role in happiness. Conservative philosophy holds that people are in control of their destiny — it just takes hard work and effort — therefore conservatives tend to be optimists because they can always adapt and change their situation. Liberalism continually stresses the notion that the average person’s life at the mercy of outside powers and forces. The idea that the system is rigged is a depressing one indeed and is a factor weighing against liberals’ happiness.
Who are the happiest people?
Political extremists who believe they are absolutely right. However, those people are often so convinced they are right that they come to see their ideological opposition as being “evil,” reports the Economist. Despite their happiness, the extremists are the ones who make everyone else unhappy.
Mar
24
Why Liberal Talk Radio Can’t Compete
Filed Under Air America, liberalism, progressives | 4 Comments
I was driving home after being on the road after driving about five hours for a business trip today.
Usually, I listen to a combination of local talk radio and XM satellite radio. I usually tune into WLS’ Roe Conn show in the afternoons for some entertainment, to catch up with the news, and get traffic updates.
This afternoon, I took a different expressway back home than my normal route for this particular trip because of road construction signs warning of long waits and new lane configurations. While I was driving along the expressway, I saw a billboard advertising the local progressive talk radio station.
The ad inspired me to flip from WLS to the Air America channel on XM’s satellite service. The ad got me to act, but it sent me in the wrong direction because I didn’t want to change my AM radio dial. Maybe one of these days, I’ll dial in the local version of Air America to hear what’s going on over there.
While I was listening to XM’s Air American channel, I heard a progressive talk host spend at least 10 minutes asking a caller a series of questions about Iraq.
Each question “drilled down,” as the talk host said, deeper into the question of whether there were actually really bad guys (and gals) in Iraq who want to do harm to America. We all know there are bad guys there blowing up bombs, so it seems silly to even challenge the facts, but lets ignore that for this discussion.
When the caller wasn’t able to compare and contrast all of various factions who could be causing trouble or who might be friendly or who might be playing both sides for the best deal, he launched into an attack on John McCain.
The whole exercise had been a way to show that most people aren’t tuned into the particulars about who is blowing up the IEDs in Iraq, so therefore John McCain’s Iraq policy is all wrong, according to the host.
It would be the same as asking someone from Northwest Indiana to make a diagram of all of the major criminal figures in the region. I’m not sure that most people would be able to do so, but even without detailed knowledge of the local criminal element they wouldn’t mind the police being out and about enforcing the laws.
A broader perspective always comes in handy in these situations. People don’t need to know flow charts and flash cards to know if things are necessary.
I flipped back to local programming because it was a waste of time to continue listening to the silliness on Air America.
There’s nothing entertaining about listening to a laundry list of questions being asked of someone about arcane topics that don’t make a difference in the grand scheme of things. If you’re against the war, be against the war. Be proud of that fact and try to win over people who might be in favor of the surge.
Don’t base your disagreement on the fact that you know more about the various social, political and religious factions on the ground than someone else.
I don’t know how to fly an airplane, but I can appreciate that there are thousands of airplanes flying overhead right now. Not knowing the physics of flight doesn’t detract from my appreciation that air travel is a good thing.
Just knowing a lot of details about a subject doesn’t mean that your opinion is right.
Liberal talk radio would do well to focus less on all of the “beautiful mind” details and more on the larger picture.
The same could be said of the current Hillary Clinton vs. Barack Obama battle. If I was a Democrat, I’d demand that Hillary step back and look at the situation from a broader perspective, instead of focusing on the smaller details of running a campaign and hoping to win her party’s nomination.
Of course, if history is any guide — remember Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union — progressives usually focus on the details and forget about people, especially if they get in the way of progress.
