Makers and Takers: Why Conservatives Work
Harder, Feel Happier, Have Closer Families, Take Fewer Drugs, Give
More Generously, Value Honesty More, Are Less Materialistic and
Envious, Whine Less…and Even Hug Their Children More Than
Liberals
by Peter Schweizer
(Doubleday, 258 pages, $24.95)
“I think that when statesmen forsake their own private conscience
for the sake of their political duties, they lead their country, by
a short route, to chaos.” So said Robert Bolt’s Sir Thomas More in
A Man For All Seasons.
The opposite side of that moral coin is explored by Peter
Schweizer in his book, Makers and Takers — namely, the
personal consequences of a moral compass that points unswervingly
to the political left. Schweizer’s answer is given in his extended
subtitle — a list of declarations that clearly suggest the royal
road to happiness isn’t paved with fervent commitment to government
health care.
In this short, generously spaced work Schweizer debunks the
popular notion that liberals are better people than supposedly
tight-fisted, hard-hearted, mentally unstable conservatives. After
providing a gut-wrenching sample of popular elite opinion — from
tendentious “studies” that classify Stalin as a conservative to the
vacuous blatherings of Bill Maher — Schweizer proceeds to demolish
those opinions with peer-reviewed sociological data that show
liberals are generally more selfish, more focused on money, less
hardworking, less emotionally satisfied, less honest, and even less
knowledgeable about politics than their conservative
counterparts.
In addition to anecdotal evidence (like Bill Clinton’s 957-page
monument to self-obsession) Schweizer cites his favorite source,
the “highly regarded General Social Survey,” to show that
self-described strong conservatives are much more likely than their
liberal counterparts (55-20%) to say they get happiness by putting
another person’s happiness ahead of their own. Similar results were
obtained in response to queries about caring for a seriously ill
spouse or parent. Another study found that students who called
themselves “very liberal” or “radical” tended to have a
“narcissistic pathology” that exhibited itself in “grandiosity,
envy…and a sense of entitlement.” Not surprisingly, these
students were not only the most power-oriented but also the most
pot-oriented.
This professed gap between liberals and conservatives when it
comes to self-centeredness also carries over into practice. While
liberals tout their generosity and berate conservative greed, the
hard facts (and IRS data) tell another story. That Al Gore gave
just $353 to charity in 1998, out of an adjusted gross income of
$197,729, appears to be a common occurrence among the former V-P’s
ideological associates. The 1040s of leftists like Robert Reich,
Andrew Cuomo, Ted Kennedy, and even Franklin Roosevelt tell a
similar tale. Indeed, as Schweizer notes, Al Gore looks “downright
benevolent” when compared to John Kerry, who gave none of his
126,179 taxable dollars to charity in 1995.
SCHWEIZER’S GENERAL SOCIAL SURVEY shows that this anecdotal
evidence corresponds with the tendency of conservatives to donate
more money than liberals and to volunteer more time to charitable
causes. Even after eliminating church activities, conservatives
still volunteered for charitable work more frequently than liberals
(27-19%). Prof. Arthur C. Brooks, author of Who Really Cares? (and the incoming
president of the American Enterprise Institute) , calculates the
annual giving gap between religious conservatives and liberals at
$2,210 to $642. This disparity suggests the accuracy of Merryle
Rukeyser’s witty definition of a liberal as someone who’s liberal
with other people’s money.
Since liberals squeeze their greenbacks so tightly, it follows
that they also value money more highly than conservatives when it
comes to job satisfaction, a conclusion born out by Schweizer’s
statistics (36-24%). Consistent with their entitlement mentality,
liberals also put twice as much value on leisure time than
conservatives and considerably more value on a low-stress work
environment (56-36%). It clearly takes a government-run
Wunder-Village to produce these labor conditions — high
pay, leisure time, no pressure. Add to these job priorities the
fact that conservatives value hard work more than liberals, and
it’s easy to see why Schweizer tells employers to “think long and
hard” before hiring someone wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt.
Unrealistic workplace expectations doubtless foster another
unpleasant characteristic that pervades the left — envy. This
trait is perfectly illustrated by an anecdote Schweizer provides
about a student who traded his $15-an-hour pizza job for one paying
only $6.25-an-hour. The reason for this counterproductive economic
decision was envy over the fact that the enterprising student who
started the business was making $50-an-hour. Such reasoning
coincides with the thought-patterns of that Russian who, given only
one wish by a genie, wished that his neighbor’s barn should burn
down.
It should come as no surprise that liberals don’t score as well
as conservatives on honesty, since leftists frequently subscribe to
a “higher” morality that covers a multitude of stained blue
dresses. As radical organizer Saul Alinsky put the matter, “Ethical
standards must be elastic to stretch with the times.” Such
flexibility is certainly helpful when it come to rationalizing the
biographical liberties taken by poet Quincy Troupe, Professor
Edward Said, and Yale Professor Paul de Man — to say nothing of
the dialogical liberties taken by Robert Reich in his recent
“memoir.” Not surprisingly, this ethical flexibility only extends
in one political direction.
ON ANOTHER STATISTICAL front, Schweizer provides data that show
Michael Douglas’ angry character in Falling Down should
have been a liberal with a UN-WORLD license plate. It turns out
that “very liberal” folks are three times more likely to “let fly”
than corresponding conservatives. That lamp-shattering stat
corresponds with another from the General Social Survey that shows
extreme liberals six times more likely than extreme conservatives
to have reported a mental health problem (30-5%). Schweizer notes
that the left’s emphasis on victimization contributes to this
psychic distress — as does the idea that individual initiative
counts for nothing against a “lottery of life” rigged by and for
conservatives. Beyond those political factors, the left’s sympathy
for philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre also contributes to the
frustration of folks who find an absurd universe mentally
taxing.
Probably the most distressing assertion in Schweizer’s book, for
liberals, is the claim that conservatives generally know more about
politics. Indeed, the gap between the political knowledge of strong
Republicans and strong Democrats, based on the calculations of
George Mason law professor Ilya Somin, equals several years of
formal education. “Independent” and “weak” Republicans also scored
higher on Somin’s scale than their ideological counterparts. So
much for Thomas Frank’s assumption that folks in Kansas are too
dumb to know what’s good for them.
Perhaps the most unexpected findings in Schweizer’s statistical
and anecdotal compendium were those related to the paranormal: that
liberals are more likely to believe in ghosts than conservatives
(Gallup, 42-25), that they are more likely to believe in
communication with spirits (CBS, 43-29) and that they are
significantly more likely to say UFOs have visited the earth.
Actually, those ratios shouldn’t come as a surprise — given
Hillary’s chats with Eleanor Roosevelt and Dennis Kucinich’s stated
views on extraterrestrials. (Note to aliens: Dennis is ready for
beaming.) Schweizer explains this data by noting that many
liberals, absent a belief in God, have gravitated toward
superstition, thus confirming G. K. Chesterton’s assertion that
those who don’t believe in God will believe in anything.
In sum, Schweizer has created a compact sociological tour de
force that is destined to meet the same fate among the MSM as
Dr. Brooks’ book on giving — malign neglect. I suspect that those
few leftists who deign to acknowledge its existence will focus on
methodological flaws that are bound to exist in any large
collection of social science data. But then, what else would one
expect from a group of thin-skinned, stingy, ill-informed, and
mentally unstable journalists?
