{"id":140,"date":"2008-04-11T15:21:43","date_gmt":"2008-04-11T15:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/castingstones\/2008\/04\/are-conservatives-really-happi.html"},"modified":"2008-04-11T15:21:43","modified_gmt":"2008-04-11T15:21:43","slug":"are-conservatives-really-happi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/04\/are-conservatives-really-happi.html","title":{"rendered":"Are conservatives really happier?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In his book, <em>Who Really Cares: the surprising truth about compassionate Conservatives<\/em> (Basic Books 2006), Syracuse University Professor Arthur C. Brooks demonstrates that &#8220;conservatives&#8221; give considerably more money and time to charitable causes than do liberals, thus proving that &#8220;compassionate conservative&#8221; is not an oxymoron.<br \/>\nOnce again, Dr. Brooks mugs common cultural perceptions with massive data. In his new book, <em>Gross National Happiness<\/em> (Basic Books, 2008), Dr. Brooks finds that &#8220;conservatives&#8221; are happier than &#8220;liberals.&#8221; In fact, Dr. Brooks&#8217; research shows that conservatives have been happier than liberals for nearly four decades. Why?<br \/>\nEconomically, liberals are statistically &#8220;better off&#8221; than conservatives. So much for money buying happiness.<br \/>\nDr. Brooks&#8217; research reveals that conservatives are more likely to be married and go to religious services on a weekly basis (twice as likely in both cases).<br \/>\nConservatives are also more likely to have children, and more of them, than liberals. Dr. Brooks found parents are significantly happier than non-parents.<br \/>\nWhen one combines being religious with being conservative, such religious conservatives are ten times more likely to say they are &#8220;very happy&#8221; compared to &#8220;not too happy&#8221; (50 percent to 5 percent).<br \/>\nDr. Brooks also finds that &#8220;conservatives&#8221; are more optimistic about both the future, in general, and the future of their country.<br \/>\nDr. Brooks seems to be making a habit of destroying cultural myths. Perhaps we should start calling Dr. Brooks, <em>Arthur the Myth-Slayer<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his book, Who Really Cares: the surprising truth about compassionate Conservatives (Basic Books 2006), Syracuse University Professor Arthur C. Brooks demonstrates that &#8220;conservatives&#8221; give considerably more money and time to charitable causes than do liberals, thus proving that &#8220;compassionate conservative&#8221; is not an oxymoron. Once again, Dr. Brooks mugs common cultural perceptions with massive&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Are conservatives really happier? - Casting Stones<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/04\/are-conservatives-really-happi.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Are conservatives really happier? - Casting Stones\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In his book, Who Really Cares: the surprising truth about compassionate Conservatives (Basic Books 2006), Syracuse University Professor Arthur C. Brooks demonstrates that &#8220;conservatives&#8221; give considerably more money and time to charitable causes than do liberals, thus proving that &#8220;compassionate conservative&#8221; is not an oxymoron. Once again, Dr. Brooks mugs common cultural perceptions with massive&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/04\/are-conservatives-really-happi.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Casting Stones\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-04-11T15:21:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dr. Richard Land\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Are conservatives really happier? - Casting Stones","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/04\/are-conservatives-really-happi.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Are conservatives really happier? - Casting Stones","og_description":"In his book, Who Really Cares: the surprising truth about compassionate Conservatives (Basic Books 2006), Syracuse University Professor Arthur C. Brooks demonstrates that &#8220;conservatives&#8221; give considerably more money and time to charitable causes than do liberals, thus proving that &#8220;compassionate conservative&#8221; is not an oxymoron. Once again, Dr. Brooks mugs common cultural perceptions with massive&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/04\/are-conservatives-really-happi.html","og_site_name":"Casting Stones","article_published_time":"2008-04-11T15:21:43+00:00","author":"Dr. Richard Land","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/04\/are-conservatives-really-happi.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/04\/are-conservatives-really-happi.html","name":"Are conservatives really happier? - Casting Stones","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-04-11T15:21:43+00:00","dateModified":"2008-04-11T15:21:43+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#\/schema\/person\/14f4e150e7d01410b8826256299d6429"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/04\/are-conservatives-really-happi.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/04\/are-conservatives-really-happi.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/04\/are-conservatives-really-happi.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Are conservatives really happier?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/","name":"Casting Stones","description":"Casting Stones","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#\/schema\/person\/14f4e150e7d01410b8826256299d6429","name":"Dr. Richard Land","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/cbf\/cbf3406d76f8380ee6c84afe3132fdebx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/cbf\/cbf3406d76f8380ee6c84afe3132fdebx96.jpg","caption":"Dr. Richard Land"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/author\/jmartin"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}