The Patriot Post® · Conservatives: Still Happier

In one of the more trenchant entries in his timeless Devil’s Dictionary, satirist Ambrose Bierce defined happiness as “an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.”

That sounds a lot like the definition of schadenfreude, doesn’t it? And yet, I suspect Bierce was onto something — that he was plumbing the depths of human nature to make a connection that we tend not to want to acknowledge. The reality, as our Teutonic friends have told us, is that sometimes we can’t help but rub our palms together with glee at the misfortune of others.

Not all others, of course. Just some others. And 118 years later, in last week’s New York Times, columnist Thomas Edsall confirmed that hunch. His headline reads, “The Happiness Gap Between Left and Right Isn’t Closing.”

Edsall says this with lament, and he asks, “Why is it that a substantial body of social science research finds that conservatives are happier than liberals?”

His partial answer: “Those on the right are less likely to be angered or upset by social and economic inequities, believing that the system rewards those who work hard, that hierarchies are part of the natural order of things and that market outcomes are fundamentally fair. Those on the left stand in opposition to each of these assessments of the social order, prompting frustration and discontent with the world around them.”

Where am I going with all this? I’m glad you asked. In his 2008 book Gross National Happiness, conservative author and current Harvard professor Arthur Brooks writes about the centrality of happiness to the American experiment; about how that word in enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, along with “life” and “liberty,” as one of the fundamental rights of man. In the book’s first chapter, titled “The Politics of Happiness,” Brooks writes: “Happiness is a political subject. It is a political subject because Americans tend to vote for politicians who have made their lives happier in the past, or who they think will make their lives happier in the future.” Think about it as objectively as you can: Were you happier during Donald Trump’s presidency than you are under Joe Biden’s presidency? Or than you were during Barack Obama’s eight years in office?

In a recent essay on what our Mark Alexander calls the national “happiness deficit,” he writes:

The youngsters on our team came of age during the eight long years of Barack Obama’s regime. That was followed by a fortuitous one-term reprieve after Donald Trump defeated Obama’s deplorable heir-apparent, Hillary Clinton.

But now, our nation is under the perilous rule of the puppeteers controlling the inept and vacuous Joe Biden, who not only excels as the most prolific presidential prevaricator in history but has mastered the art of fomenting disunity.

Back to Edsall, who glumly notes that conservatives have been on something of a happiness roll of late: “The happiness gap has been with us for at least 50 years, and most research seeking to explain it has focused on conservatives. More recently, however, psychologists and other social scientists have begun to dig deeper into the underpinnings of liberal discontent — not only unhappiness but also depression and other measures of dissatisfaction.”

Edsall noted that those on the Left tend to be upset with the current social order, but he also argued that this disenchantment is only part of it. The other part is that they feel helpless to control it. That’s a pretty powerful one-two punch.

A third punch to leftist well-being is their abandonment of the timeless Western institutions of faith and marriage and patriotism. For example, Brooks writes, “Married people from all political groups are nearly twice as likely as singles to say they are very happy.” Leftists, by distancing themselves from — and, indeed, actively working to destroy — our institutions, have left themselves with less and less to hold onto.

All this flies in the face of Barack Obama’s “bitter clingers,” doesn’t it?

This leads us to another fascinating finding from Brooks — one that perhaps helps to describe our hyper-charged and hyper-partisan political environment: The extremists are the happiest among us. It seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? Everything in moderation, right?

But no: “People at the extremes are happier than political moderates. Correcting for income, education, age, race, family situation and religion, the happiest Americans are those who say they are either ‘extremely conservative’ (48 percent very happy) or ‘extremely liberal’ (35 percent). Everyone else is less happy, with the nadir at dead-center ‘moderate’ (26 percent).”

For those who’d hoped that a rapprochement between Right and Left is within our grasp, I’m sorry to disappoint you. And for the Angry Left, the floggings will continue until morale improves.