Smile if (and Only if) You're Conservative

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By George F. Will
Thursday, February 23, 2006.

To bemused conservatives, it looks like yet another example of analytic overkill by the intelligentsia -- a jobs program for the (mostly liberal) academic boys (and girls) in the social sciences, whose quantitative tools have been brought to bear to prove the obvious.

A survey by the Pew Research Center shows that conservatives are happier than liberals -- in all income groups. While 34 percent of all Americans call themselves "very happy," only 28 percent of liberal Democrats (and 31 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats) do, compared with 47 percent of conservative Republicans. This finding is niftily self-reinforcing: It depresses liberals.

Election results do not explain this happiness gap. Republicans have been happier than Democrats every year since the survey began in 1972. Married people and religious people are especially disposed to happiness, and both cohorts vote more conservatively than does the nation as a whole.

People in the Sun Belt -- almost entirely red states -- have sunnier dispositions than Northerners, which could have as much to do with sunshine as with conservatism. Unless sunshine makes people happy, which makes them conservative.

Such puzzles show why social science is not for amateurs. Still, one cannot -- yet -- be prosecuted for committing theory without a license, so consider a few explanations of the happiness gap.

Begin with a paradox: Conservatives are happier than liberals because they are more pessimistic. Conservatives think the Book of Job got it right ("Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward"), as did Adam Smith ("There is a great deal of ruin in a nation"). Conservatives understand that society in its complexity resembles a giant Calder mobile -- touch it here and things jiggle there, and there, and way over there. Hence conservatives acknowledge the Law of Unintended Consequences, which is: The unintended consequences of bold government undertakings are apt to be larger than, and contrary to, the intended ones.

Conservatives' pessimism is conducive to their happiness in three ways. First, they are rarely surprised -- they are right more often than not about the course of events. Second, when they are wrong, they are happy to be so. Third, because pessimistic conservatives put not their faith in princes -- government -- they accept that happiness is a function of fending for oneself. They believe that happiness is an activity -- it is inseparable from the pursuit of happiness.

The right to pursue happiness is the essential right that government exists to protect. Liberals, taking their bearings, whether they know it or not, from President Franklin Roosevelt's 1936 State of the Union address, think the attainment of happiness itself, understood in terms of security and material well-being, is an entitlement that government has created and can deliver.

On Jan. 3, 1936, FDR announced that in 34 months his administration had established a "new relationship between government and people." Amity Shlaes, a keen student of FDR's departure from prior political premises, says, "The New Deal had a purpose beyond curing the Depression. It was to make people look to Washington for help at all times." Henceforth the federal government would be permanently committed to serving a large number of constituencies: "Occasional gifts to farmers or tariffs for business weren't enough." So, liberals: Smile -- you've won.

Nevertheless, normal conservatives -- never mind the gladiators of talk radio; they are professionally angry -- are less angry than liberals. Liberals have made this the era of surly automobile bumpers, millions of them, still defiantly adorned with Kerry-Edwards and even Gore-Lieberman bumper stickers, faded and frayed like flags preserved as relics of failed crusades. To preserve these mementos of dashed dreams, many liberals may be forgoing the pleasures of buying new cars -- another delight sacrificed on the altar of liberalism.

But, then, conscientious liberals cannot enjoy automobiles because there is global warming to worry about, and the perils of corporate-driven consumerism, which is the handmaiden of bourgeoisie materialism. And high-powered cars (how many liberals drive Corvettes?) are metaphors (for America's reckless foreign policy, for machismo rampant, etc.). And then there is -- was -- all that rustic beauty paved over for highways. (And for those giant parking lots at exurban mega-churches. The less said about them the better.) And automobiles discourage the egalitarian enjoyment of mass transit. And automobiles, by facilitating suburban sprawl, deny sprawl's victims -- that word must make an appearance in liberal laments; and lament is what liberals do -- the uplifting communitarian experience of high-density living. And automobiles . . .

You see? Liberalism is a complicated and exacting, not to say grim and scolding, creed. And not one conducive to happiness.

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[Cancel10]

I posted this article not as an attack on liberals.

I'm just interested in hearing your thoughts.

[Bonestorm]

My first thought was that George Fucking Will is really phoning it in these days. Then I noticed the date line. My second thought was that George Fucking Will is phoning it in these days even if this is an old column.

[Minister of Truth]

I'm a college student. I am often depressed by the demands of my course load and the fears of being unsuccessful after I am finished with my Master's degree (and of keeping up with all of my military training and annual requirements in the Guard). The college life also has its perks - I enjoy classroom discussions and various activities, the beer and parties are always fun, the people are cool, etc.

I am also an unusual breed of conservative. I have a Hamiltonian view of society, which is to say that people are stupid, irrational creatures, and that the only way to maintain society is through the constitutional and federal system of checks and balances (largely thanks to the minds of Adams and Madison). This often makes me depressed when contemplating history and politics, because America has become highly democratized, and the constitutional system keeps falling prey to the vices of the people and the unethical politicians who play the people for the fools they are in the pursuit of power, wealth, and ideology.

At the same time, I am a very mellow and relaxed guy, who while cynical, sarcastic, and quirky, is surprisingly upbeat a lot of the time. I can be extremely lazy, and committed to the pointless pursuit of random triviality.

Bottom line, this article, and the numerous studies of the "happy conservative" do not apply to me. My guess is that a great deal of it has to do with the Irish Catholic in me.

[charver]

Bottom line, this article, and the numerous studies of the "happy conservative" do not apply to me. My guess is that a great deal of it has to do with the Irish Catholic in me.

Three, if you're not comfortable with it you really should tell him to stop.

[FUCK THE POLICE]

I'm a college student. I am often depressed by the demands of my course load and the fears of being unsuccessful after I am finished with my Master's degree (and of keeping up with all of my military training and annual requirements in the Guard). The college life also has its perks - I enjoy classroom discussions and various activities, the beer and parties are always fun, the people are cool, etc.

I am also an unusual breed of conservative. I have a Hamiltonian view of society, which is to say that people are stupid, irrational creatures, and that the only way to maintain society is through the constitutional and federal system of checks and balances (largely thanks to the minds of Adams and Madison). This often makes me depressed when contemplating history and politics, because America has become highly democratized, and the constitutional system keeps falling prey to the vices of the people and the unethical politicians who play the people for the fools they are in the pursuit of power, wealth, and ideology.

At the same time, I am a very mellow and relaxed guy, who while cynical, sarcastic, and quirky, is surprisingly upbeat a lot of the time. I can be extremely lazy, and committed to the pointless pursuit of random triviality.

Bottom line, this article, and the numerous studies of the "happy conservative" do not apply to me. My guess is that a great deal of it has to do with the Irish Catholic in me.

Southerners are really liberals!

Hello?

Hello?

Where did everyone go?

[blackascoal]

Smile if you're a republican .. but laugh out loud roll on the floor while choking with laughter if you're not a republican.

George "Wrong about everything" Will

[Minister of Truth]

Three, if you're not comfortable with it you really should tell him to stop.

But he might get angry!!!

Naw, seriously though. The only anal action I get into is with that princess that is always getting kidnapped -

Southerners are really liberals!

Hello?

Hello?

Where did everyone go?

Yeah, notice the geographical locales of the conservative founding fathers and statesmen of the 18th through 19th centuries versus that of the liberal ones. The liberal tradition was exclusively a Southern one for eons.

Hell, even the religious fundamentalists (Puritans, Quakers, etc.) were in the North.