Conservatives are happier, but they’re the only ones

February 23, 2006

George Will tried to explain today the big difference between the left and right these days: liberals are less happy.

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.

Will’s point is that those on the right seem to have “sunnier dispositions,” while liberals are tied to a world view that is “complicated and exacting, not to say grim and scolding.” There’s more psycho-babble than usual for a Will column that seeks to explain the whole thing, though I have to admit, I got lost about half-way through. It must have something to do with my disposition.

Nevertheless, I think Will seems to be choosing his data rather selectively. I don’t doubt that the Pew Research Center found that the right is happier — when you control every branch of government, it tends to make one side pretty satisfied — but Will may want to take a moment to recognize the fact that everyone else is far from thrilled.

Consider, for example, whether Americans think the country is on the right track. For several months, most polls show that the public, by an almost two-to-one margin, are “dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time.”

When it comes to public confidence in the government, it’s even worse.

Ask Irene Tuzinski, a retiree living in a small, northeast Pennsylvania town, about the legacy of Hurricane Katrina, and she answers with an intense blend of bewilderment and outrage.

She questions the government’s handling of the recovery — “What happened to all the money we’re spending on Katrina?” she asks — and she doubts the government could ably handle another major disaster. And a new Associated Press-Ipsos Public Affairs poll suggests she is far from alone.

The poll finds public confidence in government disaster readiness is lower today, six months after Katrina struck, than it was in early September 2005, when images of rooftop-stranded storm victims were fresh in the nation’s mind.

The public is less confident in the government’s disaster readiness now that it was in Katrina’s immediate aftermath? I wouldn’t have guessed that.

But George Will is encouraged by the fact that conservatives are still happy. Too bad they’re the only ones.

When you’re obscenely rich, or when you control all government, or when you have your head in the sand, or when you believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, or when you don’t mind drooling out both sides of your mouth, or when you wouldn’t know how to criticize things if you were paid to do it, or you don’t regard the “least of His brethren” as your concern, or … it’s very likely you’ll be pleased with things.

  • or we could note that fewer than half of conservatives are “happy,” whatever in the universe that means.

  • could also be the effect of all the lithium, prozac etc. they take. Maybe that should have been a follow-up question.

  • A more telling statistic would be how many Americans are capable of informed and sustained rational thought?

    I’ve heard that 62% of Americans actually believe in the existance of Satan.

  • I tried to comment on Will’s piece on my blog this morning but I couldn’t. All I really wanted to do is find the smug, arrogant asshole and smack the insipid smile right off his face.

    Seriously, anyone who puts any faith in the notion that happiness can be measured simply by a pollster asking people if they are happy is a moron. How does one measure happiness? If someone were to ask me if I was happy my answer would depend on the day, my mood, what kind of sleep I got the night before, what was going on at the time, etc. Happiness is hardly a fixed, unchanging state, it’s hardly quantifiable.

    As for whether or not conservatives are “happier,” I think they probably are– they’re generally self-centered, arrogant people who believe in skyfaries and that people are poor because that is God’s plan. I think if I believed I had all the answers and that my way was the the only way to think/live/love I probably would be a lot happier too. But I wouldn’t change my occasional anger/depression/outrage/frustration for a false sense of security or happiness if you paid me. In that way I am far happier being a liberal, I think my worldview is more honest, I’m not in denial of the ugly parts.

  • Well put, Zoe.

    I was struck by Will’s characterization of the liberal perspective as one that is “complicated and exacting, not to say grim and scolding.” Are we to infer, then, that adopting a simplistic, dumbed-down world view that conveniently ignores the ugly parts is a virtue?

    This morning I finished reading Bertrand Russell’s essay “A Free Man’s Worship,” the central premise of which is essentially that we must face the ugliness of a brief, mortal existence in a cold and uncaring universe rather than bury our heads in the false comfort of dogmatic superstition if we hope to reach a point of genuine wisdom. It seems as though Will could learn a few things from Russell.

  • Brecht, To Posterity:

    Indeed I live in the dark ages!
    A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
    A hard heart. He who laughs
    Has not yet heard
    The terrible tidings.

  • I can’t imagine George Will wallowing in such shallow,
    pop culturalist drek. And gloating so shamelessly.

    But hey, give ’em credit. The radical right has won
    the game.

    You’d think, though, that a “real” conservative like George
    Will would understand that he, along with the libertarians,
    isn’t on the winning side, either.

  • I’d be happier if a Democrat or at minimum a sane/smart Republican was at the helm. Instead it is Bush, Cheney and their crowd and so I’m not. Normally I am a fairly happy or at least positive thinking person, but 5 years of their crap on top of 9/11, Katrina, and Iraq has not exactly been something to engender happiness.

    If they had run this same survey during the Clinton years what would the result have been?

  • Ignorance is not only bliss, but the foundation of the modern Republican Party.

    Speaking of polls and ignorance. A few years ago, a poll found that something like 40% of Americans (polled) believed the Sun orbits around the Earth. My guess is that 40% is Bush’s core.

  • Alibubba–sweet.

    Also, one must point out the new news that the average american’s income is dropping, and more and more americans are having to use soup kitchens to survive. Wonder what effect that has on one’s attitude.

  • Conservatives ought to be happy. Have you ever heard of the very popular radio program from the, 1940s, “It Pays To Be Ignorant”

    I can’t help but notice how much the Bush gang is paying out of our treasury to the ignorant. Example: According to Americans united for separation of church and state, they have granted $2,000,000.00 to one church on the grounds they are rallying America to a “Just Cause” or something equally IGNORANT.

    Maybe we’ll get a change for the SMARTER. The Bible is a proved hoax and without it they don’t have a leg to stand on.

  • I’ll bet that the Dubai ports deal has knocked a few points off that happiness factor. The best thing about the whole controversy is that it strikes at his base.

  • Internally, I think that I have reached a reasonably happy state of being. I’ve reached a point where I’m fairly comfortable with my beliefs, moral, ethics, etc. It’s only when I look outside of myself and see the havoc the conservative movement is wreaking on the country that I get pretty unhappy. Of course I never have had much tolerance for liars, cheats, and thieves.

  • Two things fascinate me about Will’s column.

    One, why doesn’t he want more Americans to be happy? When did conservatives decide that making 40% of Americans happy is all they have to do?

    Two, why does he keep trying to tell liberals their jobs? He is not qualified. He should shut up about what it is to be, think and feel as a liberal.

  • When you got nuthin’ to fill the blank page, fill it with drivel. I’ll bet that if Abramoff, Noe, DeLay, Cunningham, Frist, Santorum, Promo, Safavian, Reed, James Tobin, etc. were presently to be added to the survey, the results might be slightly different.

  • Does Will think happiness is a good selling point for labeling yourself “conservative”?

    Does he think that if everyone could be convinced to be “conservative” that the world would be a happier place?

  • Conservatives are happier becasue they only care about one thing, themselves. If you don’t think about the troubles in the world they don’t exist. If you slaughter humans in Iraq, it means we don’t have to deal with it here. If businesses trash the environment to make tons of cash it is ok because our portfolio improves. If we protect the unborn we don’t have to worry about the new born. If we receive tax cuts we don’t need becasue we are already well off it doesn’t matter that the health and education of children living in poverty will suffer. Of course they are happier, it is so much eaiser to live a life of greed and selfishness. George Will is the poster boy of this group.

  • The 100% of the zealots who flew planes into buildings on 9-11 were happy, giddy with the promise of meeting all those virgins in paradise. Happiness statistics can be misleading.

  • Conservative – one who conserves.

    Now all we have to do is figure out what it is they are conserving. It’s not the constitution. It’s not people’s rights to things like privacy. It’s not the enviornment. It’s not a lot of things.

    Now tell me ture. Are conservatives really conservative or have they grabbed that handle from those that would conserve the constitution, people’s rights, the enviornment. Liberals sound a lot more conservative to me than conservatives who only want their way no matter who gets hurt or what impact it will have on future generations.

  • It’s a good thing George Will doesn’t live in New Orleans or on the
    Mississippi Gulf Coast these days. He wouldn’t have too much to
    be happy about.

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