Conservatives, it says here, are happier than liberals. I am looking at this much-discussed study from New York University on “The Palliative Function of Conservative Ideology.” So far as I can make out — and you should by no means quote me on this; my powers of attention are not what they should be, for reasons to be explained — the conclusion of the study is that we conservatives don’t fret so much about social inequality. With one less thing to fret about, we’re happier. Well, that’s nice. This seems to me just another shot at proving how smug and callous conservatives are, leaving those sensitive, neurasthenic souls of the other party to anguish over the wretched of the earth.
Happier we may be, in the generality, net-net and long-term, but a conservative can be as glum as you please when the mood takes him. Ay, in the very temple of the Right, veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine, as Keats did not quite say. She’s fixed her cold grip on me recently, and I report to you now from beneath the sign of Saturn.
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