Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Cheese With That Whine?



Liberals might do well to refuse further participation in any surveys where ideological persuasion is noted. It seems every time a study of attitudes or habits comes out it leaves lefties with egg on their faces.

A few years ago it was the study of charitable giving that showed 24 of the top 25 most charitable states were Red States. There's also been the ongoing General Social Survey where conservatives have reported being happier than liberals in every year since the survey started in the 70's. Very recently, after Barack Obama's comments in Pennsylvania about people "bitter" about their economic situation clinging to guns and religion, it was revealed that both gun owners and self-identifying religious folks were happier, just as educated, and wealthier than those who weren't.

Today on National Review Online Peter Schweizer added a number of other comparisons where liberals come out looking like a mighty sad lot.:

Many observers believe that Barack Obama secured the liberal base of the Democratic party because he was antiwar from the beginning. But I think it’s because he mastered the art of complaining and won over the Whine Caucus. Today the Democratic party is dominated by groups making claims of victim status — blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, unwed mothers, artists, pampered academics, environmental activists, the poor, the unemployed, animal rights activists, women, homosexuals. As Michael Crowley openly admits on Slate: “What does define and unify the [Democratic] party is a sense of victimhood.”

A wide body of research shows that modern liberals are much more likely to complain about things in their lives. Conservatives are more content with their lives. When asked “How satisfied are you with life these days? Sixty-six percent of conservatives said “very satisfied” compared with only 46 percent of liberals. Conservatives are more likely to say they love their jobs (53 percent vs. 41 percent) and even enjoy their hobbies more (63 percent vs. 51 percent). When asked by the Social Capital Survey whether they were satisfied with their income, liberals were more than three times as likely to say “not at all satisfied” — even when they earned the same as conservatives.


I think Michael Savage is guilty of going overboard a lot, but the premise of his book "Liberalism is A Mental Disorder" doesn't sound completely crazy after noting such consistent diaparities. While I wouldn't go so far as to call liberalism a mental disorder, I would call it a symptom of a seriously self-defeating mindset.

Schweizer goes on:

When it comes to something like housework, Democrats are much more likely to complain that the division of work in their home “is unfair to me” than Republicans. In fact, they are five times as likely to whine about it. Another study in The Journal of Applied Psychology found that feminist women do less housework than traditional women — but complain more about it.

On a more serious note, researchers writing in The American Journal of Psychiatry and The Journal of Marriage and Family found that liberals are more likely to attempt suicide than conservatives.

Liberals are also more likely to whine that they are unhappy in their marriages and declare that their health is “fair or poor” than conservatives. Even when you control for income, these gaps exist. Unless you are willing to believe that certain illnesses afflict only certain political groups, something else is at work here.


If only we had a balanced media we could sit back and watch red faced liberals try their hardest to explain this all away. Oh to dream...

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