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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There's been plenty of studies showing conservatives are happier than liberals. The progressive response is to usually sneer that conservatives are happier because they are content to be ignorant and ignore the suffering and pains of others. When you look at the actual data for why conservatives are happier it's because they have stronger networks of family and friends, including being part of faith organizations or living in smaller town settings where people look after each other.

I do agree the progressive mindset is trapped by its blind belief in the proper inevitability of the right side of history, and when it fails to happen, they get frustrated and unhappy. It's a classic metaphysical concept studied in political theory and one that has dominated the left in its various guises and results in an environment where things are never, ever good enough and there always needs to be a new battle to be fought. We do see this with wokery. Despite the staggering improvement in the wellbeing, material and political, of African Americans since the 1950s, progressives still go around acting as if nothing has changed since, well, 1860.

I suppose the conservative mindset is more realistic.
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First of all, my eyes/ears grate at the world "liberal." I'm a leftist. I hate liberals almost as much as conservatives do.
That being said, I don't disagree that conservatives should be happier than liberals.
One counterpoint is that studies in human happiness repeatedly show that Nordic countries are happier than the United States by every metric. Now, I'm not here to debate the Nordic model (yes I know they aren't all the same, yes I know they aren't "socialist") but the fact is that there is data that shows that other countries with different economic systems show more happiness. Of course, former Soviet countries show the least amount of happiness, and some of the happier (relatively speaking) countries are dirt poor countries in Africa. But all in all, the US is kind of meh compared to other developed countries in terms of personal satisfaction with life.

So, that's a counterpoint grappling with the idea that I might assume, that conservatives should be happier with the way things are going. [/quote]

The intriguing thing about the Nordic model is that it was based on a highly homogenous society with a strong shared cultural tradition and self-restraint by individuals to prevent abuse of the social welfare system. That model has been substantially weakened in recent decades and social problems have emerged, so we'll see what the future brings.

I pity the word liberal. It no longer means what it did at one time. The classic 19th century enlightened liberal is not the progressive of today. And there is a distinct difference between progressivity and liberalism. So who are the liberals? Ironically, one can make a genuine claim that the modern conservatives are closer to the traditional liberals of the 19th century with their skepticism of political power, commitment to free press and speech, and stratified social classes while the modern liberals may have more in common with the 19th century strains of entrenched conservatives with emphasis on deference to people of authority and unquestioning acceptance of privileged social classes (which would be the modern professional classes of experts along with the blatant contempt of working classes and their views, as we see on DCUM and CNN and NYT daily with their continuous sneering references to Trumpsters and so forth), and open acceptance of censorship of heretical views in the name of the greater good (as we saw with COVID). The two positions have neatly flipped.

I do think liberalism is heading for a mighty explosion. A new kind of left is emerging, which is distinctly not liberal for it does not prize natural rights concepts like freedom of speech or thought over the social good, and is much more open to greater and more intrusive state control to promote the greater good (whatever it may be). Many of the old liberals are still in denial of this growing authoritarian new left but others are not (Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, the former liberals of Substack, and, of course, many voters). It'll be interesting to see what happens as it plays out in the next few elections.

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