Another study confirms that leftists are the angry, unhappy, and stingy ones.
Lefty author and radio personality Garrison Keillor captured the popular view (at least according to Hollywood and the media) of the differences between liberals and conservatives, claiming, “Liberalism is the politics of kindness,” standing for “tolerance, magnanimity, community spirit, [and] the defense of the weak against the powerful.”
Conservatives, Keillor claims on the other hand, are people who “stand for tax cuts, and further tax cuts, annual tax cuts,” and then they “use their refund to buy a gun and an attack dog” to keep people away who are not like them.
Or, as Obama put it, these are the people who are “bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”
As it turns out, that is the exact opposite of the truth.
Last year, the Social Psychological and Personality Science journal published the findings of a study by University of Southern California researcher David Newman. He analyzed the happiness of 50,000 people from 16 countries over a 40-year period.
What Newman’s team discovered is that conservatives are consistently and significantly happier than their liberal counterparts, and the more conservative a person is, the happier they are. Social conservatives are even happier than just fiscal conservatives, and both are much happier than liberals. Why? Because “there is some unique aspect of political conservatism that provides people with meaning and purpose in life.”
This was true for conservatives “at all reporting periods (global, daily, and momentary).” In other words, conservatives tend to be happy as a general rule, and not just when things are going well for them. That is extremely significant. It means their happiness is related to who they are inside, rather than being a reaction to their circumstances.
Of study participants, 52% of conservatives were “completely satisfied” with their family lives, compared to just 41% of liberals and moderates. Conservatives were also significantly more likely to believe marriage is “essential in creating and maintaining strong families,” and overwhelmingly more likely to be married (62% vs. 39%).
Considering the vast data on how marriage greatly increases overall happiness and well-being, economic stability, improved physical and mental health, and life expectancy, this is a game-changer.
In 2012, the Journal of Research in Personality analyzed four studies on happiness, and found “conservatives expressed greater personal agency (e.g., personal control, responsibility), more positive outlook (e.g., optimism, self-worth), more transcendent moral beliefs (e.g., greater religiosity, greater moral clarity, less tolerance of transgressions), and a generalized belief in fairness, and these differences accounted for the happiness gap.”
In the U.S., where leftists gravitate toward the Democrat Party and conservatives to the Republican Party, these mindsets and ideologies are clearly manifest in their messaging. As one writer put it, “Republicans … preach the message of limited government, responsibility and self-reliance, while Democrats … preach a message of victimhood and entitlement. … The former is empowering and the latter is debilitating, tending only to provoke feelings of resentment, anger, and helplessness.”
This supports the findings of a Pew Research Center study showing that Republicans maintain higher levels of happiness across all income levels, so it’s not just those evil, rich Republicans swimming in their pools of cash who are happy.
Additionally, conservative Republicans are nearly twice as likely to be “very happy” as liberal Democrats (47% to 28%), and regular church attenders were nearly twice as likely to be very happy as those who rarely or never attend.
Conservative, Christian Republicans are also far more generous than their liberal Democrat counterparts, regardless of income level. And for those who think religious conservatives only donate to charity to get the tax write-off (which makes no sense because you don’t get a dollar-for-dollar reduction in taxes), religious conservatives also donate more of their time (which could be spent making more money) to charity than liberal Democrats. In the 2012 election, 17 of the most generous states voted for Mitt Romney, while 15 of the least charitable 17 went for Barack Obama.
If you are a liberal Democrat, these findings probably offend you. You may think this is “fake news” and recall the widely broadcasted study that supposedly found Republicans have more psychopathic traits than Democrats. Numerous liberals/Democrats pointed to the study as proof that conservatism and religiosity are manifestations of mental illness.
Yet while this study’s findings were headline news when the report was issued, the retraction a short time later was barely mentioned. Go figure.
After being called out, researchers were forced to admit they screwed up the calculations, and the results were just the opposite of what they claimed: “The descriptive and preliminary analyses portion of the manuscript was exactly reversed.” In other words, the data showed that it was liberals, not conservatives, who were most likely to be associated with psychoticism.
Of course, common sense and personal observation will confirm this. It is not conservative, Christian Republicans who are rioting and assaulting those who disagree with them, or fire-bombing cars, smashing store windows, and showing up at private homes and threatening families and terrifying children. That would be “progressive” Democrats, who feel their violence is justified by their morally superior cause.
So if you find yourself unhappy, aimless, and without purpose, there is an easy fix — don a MAGA hat and head to church!
SOURCE
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Retired Army Officer Remembers Lt. Col. Vindman as Partisan Democrat Who Ridiculed America
Vindman is all the Donks have got in support of their Ukraine theory
A retired Army officer who worked with Democrat “star witness” Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman in Grafenwoher, Germany, claims Vindman “really talked up” President Barack Obama and ridiculed America and Americans in front of Russian military officers.
In an eye-opening thread on Twitter last week, retired U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Jim Hickman said that he “verbally reprimanded” Vindman after he heard some of his derisive remarks for himself. “Do not let the uniform fool you,” Hickman wrote. “He is a political activist in uniform.”
Hickman’s former boss at the Joint Multinational Simulation Center in Grafenwoehr has since gone on the record to corroborate his story.
Hickman, 52, says he’s a disabled wounded warrior who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and who received numerous medals, including the Purple Heart.
The retired officer said that Vindman, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Ukraine, made fun of the United States to the point that it made other soldiers “uncomfortable.” For example, Hickman told American Greatness that he heard Vindman call Americans “rednecks” —a word that needed to be translated for the Russians. He said they all had a big laugh at America’s expense.
Vindman’s former boss, NSC Senior Director for European Affairs Tim Morrison, threw cold water on Vindman’s claims in his own testimony later in the week, saying he didn’t have concerns that “anything illegal was discussed” in the phone call. Morrison also testified that Ukrainian officials were not even aware that military funding had been delayed by the Trump Administration until late August 2019, more than a month after the Trump-Zelensky call.
Thomas Lasch, Hickman’s boss at the time, corroborated his story on Twitter.
Lasch vouched for Hickman in a second tweet: “Everyone on this thread should know that Jim Hickman’s patriotism and honesty is unparalleled. He is one of my personal heroes.” He added: “This is not about Trump! This is about an officer [LTC Vindman] that is disloyal to the United States of America.”
SOURCE
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Lefty Pundits to Democratic Presidential Field: 'You're Losers!'
What is it that lefty pundits can see that Democratic presidential candidates -- with all their highly-paid teams of election experts -- can't?
How to win an election, apparently.
Over on the far left, New York magazine's Jonathan Chait writes that the latest battleground states poll shows that Democrats are living "in a fantasy world." Chait starts off praising the Democratic 2018 House contenders for wading "into hostile territory" to flip 40 House districts, using a "formula centered on narrowing their target profile by avoiding controversial positions, and focusing obsessively on Republican weaknesses." Party affiliation aside, Chait is right -- that's how you flip seats, Dem or Rep. But he worries, where I'd be jubilant, that the "Democratic presidential field has largely abandoned that model." Chait goes on:
"A new batch of swing state polls from the New York Times ought to deliver a bracing shock to Democrats. The polls find that, in six swing states — Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona — Trump is highly competitive. He trails Joe Biden there by the narrowest of margins, and leads Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Normally, it is a mistake to overreact to the findings of a single poll. In general, an outlier result should only marginally nudge our preexisting understanding of where public opinion stands. This case is different."
Indeed. As Chait is forced to conclude, "if you’ve been relying on national polls for your picture of the race, you’re probably living in la-la land."
Meanwhile, a bit less left of Chait, Jay Caruso looked at the same polls and came to a similar conclusion. Writing for the UK's Independent, Caruso argues that "Democrats are over-correcting for 2020 — and they can't beat Trump that way."
Caruso notes that Obama-to-Trump voters who threw the Rust Belt to Trump in 2016 "may not want to go all in with Sanders’ or Warren's big spending plans, which include Medicare-for-All." He adds, "While PA, MI, and WI are no longer the manufacturing powerhouses they were 40 or 50 years ago, they still employ a decent number of union workers who have great healthcare benefits through their employers."
Not that I'm getting cocky about Trump's chances next November or anything, but I didn't need a fancy New York Times poll to tell me that the Dem field had moved too far to the left. All I needed to see was a show of hands.
SOURCE
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IN BRIEF
UKRAINE PROSECUTOR FIRED: Ukraine to fire Kostiantyn Kulyk, the prosecutor at center of Biden gas-company controversy (National Review)
"IT WAS WRONG AND IMPROPER": AOC settles lawsuit after blocking critic on Twitter — yet continues to block prominent conservative women (The Washington Times)
MAGA: Washington Nationals' Kurt Suzuki, Ryan Zimmerman show support for Trump during World Series White House visit (The Daily Caller)
TRADE NEGOTIATIONS: China presses Trump for more tariff rollbacks in "phase one" trade deal (Reuters)
BULL MARKET: Dow hits record as stock-market rally extends into fifth week (Associated Press)
UNITED WE STAND: Mitch McConnell says Senate trial "would not lead to a removal" of Trump if held today (USA Today)
NO SANCTUARY: Tucson voters overwhelmingly reject sanctuary-city measure (Fox News)
EXPANDED OPERATION: Trump OKs wider Syria oil mission, raising legal questions (Associated Press)
BACKFIRE: New Zealand's gun confiscation shaping up to be a massive failure (Bearing Arms)
POLICY: It's time for the U.S. to wage war on Mexican drug cartels (The Federalist)
THE PROBE THAT NEVER ENDS: First batch of Mueller-probe interview notes involving Rick Gates, Steve Bannon, and Michael Cohen have been released (The Daily Caller
JUDICIAL ACTIVISM: Obama-appointed judge blocks healthcare rule for immigrants (The Daily Caller)
PUBLIC DEFIANCE: Iran announces new nuke-deal violations during commemoration of 1979 U.S. embassy seizure (Fox News)
SEPARATING WHEAT FROM CHAFF: Thousands of migrants sent back to Mexico under Trump policy have given up their asylum claims (Fox News)
POLICY: How the Left is weaponizing cancel culture to politicize children's books (The Federalist)
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
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