What Makes People Happy, Part 4: Political Ideology? (posted 7/24/26)

To begin looking at the connection between leftist politics and unhappiness, I’ll mention the two theories I raised earlier in this series: most lefties think that they understand the world’s unfairness better than conservatives do, and they think of themselves as much more empathetic than conservatives are.  Thus they think that their greater unhappiness is the result of their being more intelligent and more caring.  As I mentioned, both of those are self-flattering diagnoses. 

To be fair, again, most people’s rationale for their own beliefs are self-flattering.  Even for a guy as humble as I am!  Just ask me.  Since I instinctively believe that I’m right about nearly everything, any explanation I give of my political views is bound to be self-flattering. 

That’s just the cross I bear.    

Sane lefty Nate Silver (whom I mentioned last time) noted a 15% happiness gap between conservatives and liberals, and offered three theories to explain leftist unhappiness, which overlap with mine above.  He also provides one extra thought, having to do with one way in which the “social solidarity” offered by seeing injustice in the world can go wrong:

“This [solidarity with like-minded others] can snowball — misery loves company — while attracting some number of people who face serious mental health challenges.”

That rings true to anyone who has perused live video and subsequent photo lineups of antifa and BLM protestors/rioters.   There’s a lot of obvious misery there, and more than a little mental illness.  And as easy as it is to turn those folks into straw men in a political argument, and to mock them mercilessly (Lord knows I’ve done my share of that!), I’m trying to redirect myself.  Because honestly, so many of them are damaged or broken, and I feel sorry for them, and want better for them.

Which is not to say that we should treat the violent among them with kid gloves.  As a society, we need to meet their violence with force, and swift trials and punishment, both to protect the rest of us from them, and to provide them with the just consequences that give them the best disincentive to continuing down the disastrous path they’re on.  

I agree with Breitbart’s John Nolte’s alternative explanation for the happiness gap, which counter-intuitively begins with the way most conservatives have lower expectations of human nature.  He says that we “have made peace with…the messy, complicated, impossible to control” aspects of humanity, and he sees that truce as the cause of a quintessentially conservative goal:  “All we want from the world (and our government) is to be left alone.”

That is a little overstated – we are willing to pay taxes for essential government services; we embrace a system of law and order that constrains our behavior – but it accurately contrasts conservatism with the leftist “[genetic predisposition] to a totalitarian streak.”

Nolte says it well: “This desire to control what cannot be controlled (human nature) breeds their unhappiness. How can anyone be happy if they get angry over someone misgendering someone else, someone voting a certain way, [etc.]” 

Does that not ring true?  Conservatives think leftist ideology is as wrong-headed as leftists think conservative ideology is…but only one side tends to end friendships, cancel co-workers and disinvite family members from Thanksgiving over political differences.  The left was furious at DeSantis and other conservative governors because they allowed their citizens to wear masks, take the vaccine and close their businesses – or not – during covid. 

The Right said, “It’s a free country.”  The Left issued mandates, and made arrests.     

In addition to “giving up your desire to control what you cannot control,” Nolte listed three other secrets to happiness: “having a work ethic, not taking yourself seriously, and being grateful for what you have.”

None of those three are necessarily political.  And yet I think they are all at least politics-adjacent, i.e. a higher proportion of conservatives are on the positive side of each of them.

Conservatism and hard work have been associated with each other for a very long time, partly because of how much more religious conservatives are, on average.  Biblical injunctions about working hard and avoiding sloth are common.  (Proverbs like “hard work brings gain, but mere talk leads only to poverty;” warnings about idleness in both testaments; Paul’s admonition, which should be plastered all over every welfare office in the country: “If a man will not work, let him not eat.”)  

I’m obviously not saying that there are no hard-working lefties, or lazy righties.  But there’s a reason it’s called “the Protestant work ethic” and not “the socialist work ethic.”  (The socialist work ethic produced…Bernie Sanders.  I rest my case.)

Leftists often sneer at the idea that there is a connection between working hard and getting ahead, as part of their overall denigration of the “American Dream,” which they see as a myth used by the rich to trick and exploit the poor.  A central belief on the Left since Marx is that you are entitled to the fruits of other workers’ labor “according to your need,” rather than what you’ve worked for and earned.      

Similarly, “Not taking yourself seriously” needn’t be the property of the left or the right.  But it mostly is, isn’t it?  When you hear descriptors like, “self-serious,” “humorless” or “scold,” don’t you think of some pinched, frowning, Liz Warren type?  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)  Strict policing of language is almost entirely the domain of the left. 

Because words are violence, and silence is also violence.  And if you so much as raise your eyebrows when a hulking bruiser with a 5 o’clock shadow wearing a summer dress says, “Call me ma’am!” in a James Earl Jones voice, you want to genocide trans people.  Shame!

I can think of several possible punchlines to a joke that starts out, “How many conservatives does it take to change a lightbulb?”  But if you propose a joke with the set-up, “How many BLANKS does it take to change a lightbulb?” and the punchline is, “THAT’S NOT FUNNY!” everybody knows that there is only one word that can fill that blank.

“Feminists.” 

And God help you if you laugh at that in a staff meeting.

Finally, we come to, “Being grateful for what you have.” 

Again, this trait is not necessarily politically coded at all, and there are plenty of grateful leftists, and sour conservative ingrates.  And yet, in my next (and last) column in this series on happiness, I will argue that generally, gratitude is much more common on the right. 

I think this is partly related to conservatism being more optimistic and leftism being more pessimistic, and that it accounts for a political “patriotism gap” that is as pronounced as the happiness gap. 

I’ll try to make that case next time.  In the meantime, the weekend is here.  So be happy!

Que Mala/Crockett, 2028!

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