If you’re reading these words for any reason other than “opposition research,” chances are you’re a conservative. If you’re a conservative, chances are someone who is not a conservative has called you “self-righteous,” “fanatical,” “judgmental,” “out of touch,” “arrogant,” “condescending” or “dumb” — or some variation thereof — for your views about social issues.
So chances are you’re going to love Peter Schweizer’s new book, 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.
While you catch your breath after reading that subtitle, consider some of these tidbits that Schweizer, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, packs into 212 eye-opening pages:
- Seventy-one percent of conservatives say you have an obligation to care for a seriously injured spouse or parent, versus 46 percent of liberals.
- Liberals are 2 1/2 times more likely to be resentful of others’ success and 50 percent more likely to be jealous of other people’s good luck.
- Fifty-five percent of conservatives get satisfaction from putting someone else’s happiness ahead of their own, nearly three times the number of liberals: just 20 percent.
- Young conservatives are more likely to volunteer for a charity, any kind of charity, than young liberals — although young liberals are more likely to say they have attended a protest rally.
- Fifty-nine percent of those who describe themselves as “very liberal” think it’s wrong to cheat on your spouse, compared to 86 percent of those who self-identify as “very conservative.”
The data come from a treasure trove of scientific surveys that have been out there for years, but never really gone through in this way. Schweizer's conclusion after mining it: “Liberalism … allows one to claim the moral high ground on just about any issue while in effect ‘outsourcing’ your personal responsibility for doing something about it to the government.”
CitizenLink talked with him this week about the book and the reactions he expects it will get from both sides of the ideological aisle.
If we both stay really quiet for a minute, I’m sure we can hear liberals howling over the revelations in this book. How do you think the Jesse Jacksons and Nancy Pelosis and Bill Clintons of the world are going to react to Makers and Takers?
Well, I hope they don’t react by seeing it as a personal attack. Because what I really clearly try to emphasize is that this is a book about ideas and the consequences of ideas. I don’t think the world is divided between bad people and good people. I think we all have fallen short of the glory of God, and we’re all flawed. I do think ideas have consequences, though, and the real culprit here are modern liberal ideas, which tend to encourage some of the worst in us.
Is it those ideas that lead them to dismiss us, as you put it, as “psychologically deformed”?
They apply all these sorts of psychoanalytical assumptions to us — that we’re repressed, that we’re miserly — and it’s just ridiculous.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg of how they feel about us, though. You document well how conservatives, especially social conservatives, get a lot of grief for the stands we take in the culture. Here at Focus on the Family Action, we’ve been called “the antichrist of the world” by our own liberal U.S. senator. We get a lot of that stuff, and it’s hard sometimes not to have that stick to you. In writing the book, are you trying to encourage folks who are constantly subject to the barrage that “you’re rotten, you’re horrible, you’re evil”?
Absolutely. What I wanted to try to do was quantify, as best as I could, the benefits of holding on to your traditional values and conservative attitudes toward family and toward life. Conservatives have certainly argued, over the years, the benefits of it, but this is the first time we’ve been able to quantify it.
And I just felt that was so necessary because we do feel so under assault — and for good reason. We’ve got an adversarial culture. We’ve got a media that certainly is not supportive. And we’ve got an academic community around the country that, by and large, rejects what we believe in. So we’re constantly being told we’re deformed morally, and we’re selfish, and we’re greedy and we aren’t concerned about others.
So, yeah, one of the reasons I wrote the book is because I want people to take comfort and say, “You know what, if you believe these traditional belief systems, you’re headed in the right direction, because the research supports the benefits of embracing this kind of belief system.”
You traffic in this sort of stuff in the way that a lot of our readers do. We’re well aware of these kinds of issues — at least, as you indicated, anecdotally. But what, if anything, did you dig up in the data that surprised you?
There were two things. No. 1, the whole honesty question. That really surprised me, though I guess it shouldn’t have because it does make sense that if you believe in relative truth, honesty is kind of a subjective thing. But to actually see the data difference in the way in which conservatives and liberals embrace whether honesty is important, that really did surprise me.
The second thing was the whole issue of families. I was a little bit surprised in the research about family structure, about how liberals are less trusting of siblings, that they’re less close to their parents. Again, that’s maybe something I should not have been surprised by.
The thing that surprised me the most wasn’t even rooted in the numbers. Did Hillary Clinton, when she was first lady, really hold a séance in the White House where she “communicated” with the spirits of Eleanor Roosevelt and Ghandi?
Yes. Yes, she did. Bob Woodward was, I think, the one who originally broke that story. And there’s a new one, that Bill Clinton turned to New Age gurus when he was president, after he lost the Congress in 1994.
You know, that chapter, about the different knowledge bases of liberals and conservatives, I really enjoyed doing because religious people — particularly Christians, as I am — are made to feel all the time that we’re believing fairy tales and we’re not really smart. But that’s simply not true. You’re going to believe in something. The question is, are you going to believe in a belief system that has existed for 2,000 years and is grounded in truth and historical space, or are you going to believe in horoscopes and ghosts and all of these other wacky ideas?
All of us know liberals. How do we use the information in this book to help us navigate those relationships?
The first thing to do is to give them the empirical evidence and make clear that these are surveys and studies that have been done by academics. And show that, look, there is a pattern that exists here in behavior. And then really step back and say, “Why do you think this pattern, this gap between liberals and conservatives on these issues, is true?”
What you’ll find is liberals will reflect on the issue of honesty. They will say they believe honesty is important, but these studies show that their approach to the topic is different than the way in which conservatives approach it. So I think you want to appeal to the virtues they say they value and embrace, but explain to them that modern liberalism does not encourage those virtues. View it as an opportunity to enlighten and inform them that these gaps exist.
I e-mailed you when I was halfway through the book just to tell you how encouraging it was to read. I explained my reaction was, “Wow, I’m not as bad as they say I am.” Do you think that will be a common reaction among folks like us?
Absolutely. There are studies in the book about how conservatives are more reflective in terms of responsibility and they think about larger-picture issues. And that’s one of the things that really handicaps modern liberalism. Conservatives believe there are things larger than themselves; for many people, it’s faith in God. But modern liberalism really is about self. And I think that really does affect and influence perspective and the manner in which people look at these issues.
Modern liberals do have this notion and this sense that they have a moral superiority. And conservatives are so used to being beaten down that they have the reaction you had. What I hope we can do now that this information has been analyzed is to keep it out there. We need to keep pushing it and encouraging people to look at it. And I think eventually the public square will be forced to address these issues.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
To learn more about Peter Schweizer and Makers and Takers, visit his Web site.
Gary Schneeberger is vice president for media relations at Focus on the Family.
(NOTE: Referral to Web sites not produced by Focus on the Family is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily constitute an endorsement of the sites' content.)
