Conservatives Happier Than Liberals
By Jeanna Bryner, Senior Writer
posted: 07 May 2008 08:20 am ETIndividuals with conservative ideologies are happier than liberal-leaners, and new research pinpoints the reason: Conservatives rationalize social and economic inequalities.
Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than left-wingers, the new study found. Conservatives also scored highest on measures of rationalization, which gauge a person's tendency to justify, or explain away, inequalities.
The rationalization measure included statements such as: "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."
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"There is no reason to think that the effects we have identified here are unique to economic forms of inequality," the researchers write. "Research suggests that highly egalitarian women are less happy in their marriages compared with their more traditional counterparts, apparently because they are more troubled by disparities in domestic labor."
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Conservatives happier than liberals
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
The failure of federal intervention in education
Most of these proposed new regulations are, in theory, good ideas. The problem is that education was and will remain a local issue in spite of the Federal Government's attempts to micromanage every elementary and secondary school in the country. The variety and quantity of student and teacher needs are too numerous for the Federal Government adequately to address them. In fact, these proposals do little more than shuffle students through a monotonous, homogenous factory. There is no creativity; no focus upon improving the quality of local curricula and teaching; no flexibility for students whose interests may be as diverse as automobile mechanics, ancient history, biology, music or agriculture; and no ability to adapt to the needs of local communities. In short, everything valuable about local control of education is missing. It is what is missing, not what is included, that is necessary to improve American education.The attempt to micromanage education (or most anything) from Washington has always been a non-starter to me. It simply makes no sense to have a small group of politicians whose main goal is to get reelected make policy for a country of 300 million across vastly different demographic, economic, and cultural conditions.
Instead of a one-size-fits-all bureaucratic education plan, what we need are higher standards in the classroom, meaningful discipline, a return to rigorous curricula (including proper grammar instruction, the study of foreign languages and a return to primary sources in history rather than watered-down textbooks), better teachers, more parental and community involvement and greater flexibility to address local needs. These would begin the process of reforming American education. As it stands, it is highly unlikely that that expectations saddled to NCLB will be fulfilled.
Sadly, I disagree with Weyrich when he says, "The problem is that education was and will remain a local issue in spite of the Federal Government's attempts to micromanage every elementary and secondary school in the country."
Education (and most everything) is increasingly becoming federally managed, and though this is extremely unwise, I see this trend continuing indefinitely. More federal money will be spent, and hence more federal authority demanded.
In spite of all evidence to the contrary, the Left has succeeded in convincing Americans that Big Brother is the solution to everything. When these "solutions" inevitably fail, it's always because we didn't spend enough money on them. The Left seeks equal outcome instead of equal opportunity, and, unfortunately, the Big Government approach delivers, but not in a good way. The end result, as we continue to see in education, is a gravitation toward mediocrity; yes, we are nudging our schools toward equal education for all--equally poor education for all. And no amount of money or increase in federal oversight is going to be enough.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
New thoughts on the death penalty
Kathryn, I reluctantly favor the death penalty. It is very reluctantly — I worked in government for a long time, so I am sympathetic to the arguments about the machinery of death in the hands of the same people who design, say, the Department of Motor Vehicles. But my major reluctance lies in something rarely discussed: the paramount role capital punishment has had in the dramatic expansion of due process rights for criminals over the last half-century. It is remarkable how many of the cases that are bad for law-enforcement involve situations where the courts, which are notoriously hostile to the death penalty, couldn't find anything wrong with the death phase of the proceedings; to prevent execution, then, they look for other seeming unfairness (in the guilt phase) as a reason to undo the result. Those precedents, in turn, inure to the benefit not only of capital defendants but all defendants — and once they are on the books, they are steadily expanded by the lower courts.Two things, though, keep me on the pro-side of the fence (aside, of course, from the proposition that it is for the people of the several states, as well as all the American people in federal cases, to decide democratically whether they want capital punishment):
1. Many of the worst criminals operate from jail. Much of the 1993 WTC bombing was plotted in Attica Prison where Sayyid Nosair was confined; al Qaeda founder Mamdouh Mahmud Salim nearly murdered a prison guard during an escape attempt while awaiting trial in the embassy bombing case; Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman issued the fatwa that bin Laden credits for the 9/11 attacks from U.S. prison where he is serving a life sentence (and where he continued to try to run his Egyptian terrorist organization with the help of his lawyer, among others); and there is a long list of mafia dons, drug kingpins, and gang leaders who have plotted and ordered murders and mayhem from their jail cells. Life sentences don't stop these savages from preying on society, and society should have a right to protect itself.
2. I'm convinced that the only reason we have available the sentence of life-imprisonment without possibility of parole is the death penalty. Human rights activists need the life-sentence as a persuasive argument against capital punishment. If there were no capital punishment, they would be arguing that life-imprisonment was cruel and excessive — and the media would be right there with them. (It's exactly the same effect Iraq has on the Democrats' rhetoric about the need to fight the war aggressively in Afghanistan. If there were no Iraq, Afghanistan would go back to being a quagmire.)
Economic ignorance fuels energy "solutions"
Some clarity from the Wall Street Journal:
Exxon's profits are soaring with the recent oil price spike, but the energy industry's earnings aren't as outsized as the politicians seem to think. Thomson Financial calculates that profits from the oil and natural gas industry over the past year were 8.3% of investment, while the all-industry average is 7.8%. And this was a boom year for oil. An analysis by the Cato Institute's Jerry Taylor finds that between 1970 and 2003 (which includes peak and valley years for earnings) the oil and gas business was "less profitable than the rest of the U.S. economy." These are hardly robber barons.This tiff over gas and oil taxes only highlights the intellectual policy confusion – or perhaps we should say cynicism – of our politicians. They want lower prices but don't want more production to increase supply. They want oil "independence" but they've declared off limits most of the big sources of domestic oil that could replace foreign imports. They want Americans to use less oil to reduce greenhouse gases but they protest higher oil prices that reduce demand. They want more oil company investment but they want to confiscate the profits from that investment. And these folks want to be President?
Late this week, a group of Senate Republicans led by Pete Domenici of New Mexico introduced the "American Energy Production Act of 2008" to expand oil production off the U.S. coasts and in Alaska. It has the potential to increase domestic production enough to keep America running for five years with no foreign imports. With the world price of oil at $116 a barrel, if not now, when? No word yet if Senators Clinton and Obama will take time off from denouncing oil profits to vote for that.
