Self Help

"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... 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 then there is was all that rustic beauty paved over for highways... 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." George Will

"The Patriot Post (PatriotPost.US)"