This is a bit of a weird George Will column:
Republicans have been happier than Democrats every year since the survey began in 1972. Married people and religious people are especially disposed to happiness, and both cohorts vote more conservatively than does the nation as a whole.
People in the Sun Belt -- almost entirely red states -- have sunnier dispositions than Northerners, which could have as much to do with sunshine as with conservatism. Unless sunshine makes people happy, which makes them conservative.
Such puzzles show why social science is not for amateurs. Still, one cannot -- yet -- be prosecuted for committing theory without a license, so consider a few explanations of the happiness gap.
And off George spins into dizzying heights of inanity. But what a peculiar start: Will identifies the obvious causal mechanisms for the disparity, then decides to knit some absurd theories. It's like burning yourself on the stove, noting that you shouldn't touch the stove, but then postulating elves with torches because, well, you can't be prosecuted for musing.
And oh what musings they are. See if you can follow this: Conservatives are happier because they are more pessimistic. They believe in the Book of Job (humanity is screwed) and Adam Smith (humanity is fucked), they think the human species is like the mobile you place above a crib, and they trust in unintended consequences.
Think that's weird? We've barely begun. Conservatives don't get surprised (they expected not to find WMD's, I guess?), they tend to be right about world events (they were kidding about finding WMD's?), they are pleased when they're wrong about world events (they're stoked we launched a war for nonexistent WMD's?), and because of all this, they understand they must seek out happiness. Question for those playing the home game: which of these things is not like the other?
Onward to liberals, who think only the government can bring happiness. This is because of the Great Depression. Also, they have a lot of bumper stickers, proving that they're angry. And they think about bad things in the world, like global warming, environmental destruction, and the obliteration of rustic scenery. All this makes them lament, which is why they're not happy.
You think I'm kidding, don't you? No column published in a major American newspaper and not written by Tom Friedman could possibly be so confused. Read it for yourself -- Will can't decide whether to be profound or punchy, so he ended up on the wrong end of comprehensible. But you know what? Mission accomplished. Knowing that you can be a columnist and get away with this sort of an effort sure made this liberal happy. The future is bright and lazy, especially compared to the present, where a blog post like that would have you guys laughing me out of the room.
The partisan happiness paradox, by the way, isn't that tricky. Marriage and religious involvement are highly correlated to satisfaction. Further, a couple obvious movers apply: geography is big, as is income. Rich people are happier. Poor Republicans are happier than poor Democrats by a statistically insignificant margin, a gap largely explained by the massive Democratic-affiliation of blacks who, for rather obvious reasons, are less happy than whites (poor blacks tend to be the urban poor, while poor whites are rural poor). Add in that folks are likelier to be liberal if they have a large degree of economic, occupational, or medical instability (health has the highest correlation with happiness), and the picture comes clear. The least happy of all, of course, are independents. Strong group affiliations are heavily related to contentment, which is why the religious, the married, and the politically affiliated out-happy them. Will may want to explain all this away through some paean to the pleasures of pessimism, but arguments that don't make sense rarely pan out.
