How can social conservatives who yearn for an America where the Ten Commandments are posted on every stationary object across this great nation be so obtuse as to the meaning of those Commandments?
I’ve been asking myself that very question after reading the results of a study that found people with conservative ideologies are happier than their liberal counterparts. It’s not that I begrudge the conservatives their happiness. Heck, this country was founded on the right to pursue happiness.
No, I’m concerned about the reason conservatives are so happy. According to researchers Jaime Napier and John Jost of New York University, conservatives are happy because they are able to rationalize social and economic inequalities.
Marital status, income or church attendance, none of it seems to have as much impact as an individual’s political leanings. Apparently, something about the conservative psyche allows adherents to gloss over injustice.
Napier and Jost reported last week that conservatives score highest in their ability to explain away these injustices. These rationalizations included classics from the Apathy Hall of Fame (I know. It hasn’t been built yet due to lack of interest) like: "It is not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others," and "this country would be better off if we worried less about how equal people are."
Excuse me? Rationalize away injustice? How did that ever become part of the doctrine of social conservatism, or compassionate conservatives’ worldview? Has part of the Book of Genesis been expunged from their Holy Scripture? The part where Cain rhetorically asks, "Am I my brother’s keeper?"
The answer to that question is supposed to be yes.
Or maybe social conservatives were snoozing in the pews on that Sunday morning when the resident pastor preached on James 2:15-17.
"Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead,"
After all, an itinerant rabbi who reportedly is the President’s favorite philosopher once said, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you."
To justify economic inequalities, a person could support the idea of meritocracy, in which people supposedly move up their economic status in society based on hard work and good performance. In that way, one's social class attainment, whether upper, middle or lower, would be perceived as totally fair and justified.
Ironically, it was the notion that everyone who was successful in life because of some innate superiority was of great concern to churchgoers who were exposed to Darwin’s Origin of the Species when it was published in the mid-19th Century. The reasoned that a "survival of the fittest" mentality might harden the hearts of the haves against the have-nots.
Did Ronald Reagan’s famous comment about the Cadillac-driving welfare queen supplant the Gospel message in the hearts of the faithful? Napier and Jost found that progressives spent more time pondering the plight of the less fortunate. An inability to justify gaps in status left progressives frustrated and disheartened, they said
"Our research suggests that inequality takes a greater psychological toll on liberals than on conservatives," the researchers wrote in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science, "apparently because liberals lack ideological rationalizations that would help them frame inequality in a positive (or at least neutral) light."
Concern for others. Isn’t that a core Christian value?
The results support and further explain a Pew Research Center survey from 2006, in which 47 percent of conservative Republicans in the U.S. described themselves as "very happy," while only 28 percent of liberal Democrats indicated such cheer.
If progressives are more alarmed by economic disparity than their typical conservative counterparts s, there are signs that change is coming. According to a Seattle Times article recently published in the Huffington Post, 15 percent of white evangelicals between 18 and 29, they no longer identify with the Republican Party. Older evangelicals are also questioning their traditional allegiance, but not at the same rate. The surprising results were taken from a September 2007 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
Other polls indicate that traditional Republican wedge issues like gay marriage have little appeal for these voters.
There’s no guarantee that these voters will all swing Obama’s way, but progressives no longer need feel that their voices are echoing in the wilderness.