Don’t Worry. Be Conservative.

Sociologist Musa al-Gharbi recently published an informative and thoughtful piece at American Affairs discussing various hypotheses for the well-established finding that conservatives tend to report being happier, healthier, and more contented than liberals. The essay, and al-Gharbi’s forthcoming work, push against the too simple, demonstrably false explanation of the well-being gap that conservatives are just rationalizing privilege. While there are probably genetic factors that predispose people both to conservatism and well-being, al-Gharbi concludes that “conservatism probably helps adherents make sense of, and respond constructively to, adverse states of affairs. These effects are independent of, but enhanced by, religiosity and patriotism (which tend to be ideological fellow-travelers with conservatism).” Conversely, “Some strains of liberal ideology … likely exacerbate (and even incentivize) anxiety, depression, and other forms of unhealthy thinking.”  

The essay and the literature al-Gharbi addresses do not directly define conservative or liberal ideology. Scholars in the literature tend to employ survey questions that ask respondents to self-report their ideological identification, on a scale of conservatism to liberalism. Of course, the definitions of conservatism and liberalism are the subject of much dispute among proponents and opponents of each; both scholars and the general public can mean different things by the terms. And, as al-Gharbi stresses, the fact that conservatives tend to report higher levels of contentment than liberals does not prove that all conservative social views are the correct ones.  

But there is reason to believe that relief from anxiety, worry, despair, and loneliness tends to be found not as often in places liberals seek them, such as therapy and activism, as places conservatives seek and often find them: faith, family, and community. In this light, the well-being gap is easily explained: conservatism as an intellectual and cultural project is simply more attuned to personal contentment than liberalism and progressivism. 

The neoconservative writer Irving Kristol defended the search for well-being in the ordinary places of bourgeois society conservatives tend to seek it, but he also saw that a healthy and vibrant society needs more:  

A society needs more than sensible men and women if it is to prosper. It needs the energies of the creative imagination as expressed in religion and the arts. It is crucial to the lives of all our citizens, as of all human beings at all times, that they encounter a world that possesses a transcendent meaning, in which the human experience makes sense. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is more de-humanizing, more certain to generate a crisis, than experiencing one’s life as a meaningless event in a meaningless world. 

During his remarkable life, the great community activist Robert L. Woodson, Sr., was a soldier in the necessary war on spiritual poverty. Against a liberalism yielding powerlessness and a conservatism of complacency, he modeled a conservatism of renewal, encouraging us to form strong relationships, build up our communities, and extend “radical grace” to our neighbors. Such a conservatism has much to offer a society rife with mental health and well-being deficits.  

Liberalism’s Pathologies 

As al-Gharbi points out, in a good deal of scholarly literature, the conservative advantage in well-being is actually considered “pathological.” Yet this framing may lead scholars not to grapple with the ways liberal ideology might be pathological.  

Liberals are more likely than conservatives to seek and receive mental health diagnoses, except for conservatives with the most severe mental health concerns, who are more likely to seek treatment and receive diagnoses. So, conservatives are generally less likely to seek mental health treatment yet report higher levels of well-being. This is consistent with questions that psychologists like Joanna Moncrieff and Paul Minot have raised about the effectiveness of pharmacological fixes and therapeutic approaches to mental health problems that place the focus outside patients’ own thought patterns, behaviors, and relationships. The so-called “treatment-prevalence paradox” is that even as treatments for mental health problems like depression have become more widely available, prevalence has not declined; in fact, it has increased.  

In the book Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, journalist Abigail Shrier argues that the iatrogenic effects of a therapeutic culture are often underappreciated and particularly detrimental to children facing normal life challenges rather than genuine mental health issues. The book has received what appears to be reasonable criticism, but it raises an important point about the limits and dangers of our therapeutic culture. Rather than equipping children and young people to face the challenges of life, we too often treat emotional pain and suffering as abnormal conditions requiring special treatment. That’s a recipe for unhappiness, as in this framework, virtually anyone and anything becomes an obstacle to our happiness, contentment, and sense of peace.  

Conservative Contentment  

Conservative theorist Russell Kirk placed a concern for the well-being of the person, what he called the person’s need for order, “the path we follow, or the pattern by which we live with purpose and meaning,” at the center of his articulation of conservatism. Citing the French philosopher Simone Weil’s The Need for Roots, he described order as the soul’s first need. As Peter Perkowitz writes, William F. Buckley, Jr. consistently argued that “political freedom was … to be cherished because it allowed individuals to devote themselves to those transpolitical goods, prominent among them family and faith, which Buckley never tired of arguing were essential to human happiness well understood.” The principle of imperfection Kirk highlights as a key feature of the conservative disposition properly limits our expectations of this life, contributing to a sense of gratitude for the blessings we enjoy. Survey respondents who identify as conservatives may not have read Kirk or Buckley, but they seem to have absorbed some of these principles and applied them to their outlook and behaviors.  

Liberal Discontentment   

While conservatives champion social order partly out of a desire to address the needs of the personal soul, liberals of the classical variety champion individual autonomy in the interest of social progress. For Buckley, freedom served the end of participation in family and faith, the end of personal happiness; but for both Friedrich Hayek and John Stuart Mill, the good of individual freedom is that it allows for innovation and progress. Most people won’t be able to use freedom to make social breakthroughs, but we can’t know in advance who will, so give freedom to all. As Hayek writes in The Constitution of Liberty, “It is not because we like to be able to do particular things, not because we regard any particular freedom as essential to our happiness, that we have a claim to freedom … What is important is not what freedom I personally would like to exercise but what freedom some person may need in order to do things beneficial to society.” Mill, in On Liberty, champions the widest berth possible for individual autonomy and freedom of choice, so that “persons of genius,” always likely to be a minority, will be able to test their ideas and bring fresh insight that redounds to social progress. Individuality, though it truly exists in only a few, serves society if it is allowed to flourish.  

The New Deal liberalism of a Franklin Roosevelt and the Civil Rights liberalism of a Martin Luther King, Jr., are a bit more attuned to the needs and concerns of the individual person. Still, these liberalisms, like progressivism, put the focus on social transformation and justice-seeking rather than on adjusting ourselves to life’s inevitable disappointments. These liberalisms tend to treat goods that are secured only through durable institutions, and even then, only partially available in this life, as rights or entitlements—think of Roosevelt’s four freedoms, which include “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear.” Think, too, of King’s famous declaration that “[i]njustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Such absolutist thinking can easily generate a sense of constant dissatisfaction and discontent with the way things are, rather than a recognition of the need to adjust our expectations and steel ourselves for disappointment and imperfection in ourselves, others, and our societies.  

A large and growing body of research points to faith, family, and community as predictors of self-reported happiness and mental health. Relationships and connection seem to matter more than income or intelligence in terms of promoting personal well-being and contentment. Woodson’s conservatism of renewal also champions a basic principle of psychological well-being: wisdom is not worrying too much about things outside our control, but energetically taking responsibility for the limited range of issues we can affect.  

While the well-being gap between conservatives and liberals does not prove that conservatism, broadly speaking, is the correct or superior worldview, it does suggest that, insofar as conservatives encourage seeking contentment and well-being where it is most likely to be found, conservatives are right. Doesn’t all this seem to add up to an obvious point? We should tell young people to be conservative, as well as patriotic and religious, for their own well-being. This is true, to some extent. But the benefits of being conservative might only work for someone who actually is conservative. In other words, in order to experience life in the same way as such a person, you might have to actually internalize the beliefs, behaviors, and habits that characterize someone who identifies as conservative.  

Fighting the Good Fight  

There is also something more. The critics who treat the well-being gap as reflective simply of privilege and an unwillingness to confront injustice are objectively wrong, but their criticism points to a truth. Well-being in this life is not the ultimate goal of life, as the best of conservatism attests. Russell Kirk’s first canon of conservatism is recognition of the divinely given moral order. Conservatism can lead (and has led) to complacency and to identifying unjust institutions and practices with the way of the world. King’s statement about justice is not literally true, but he points to a deeper truth: though we should be grateful for the goods we have received, we cannot become complacent with the world as it is. Recall another of King’s famous declarations: “If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, in a sense he is not fit to live.” 

Woodson understood that many problems in our society are not mainly due to material struggle or external adversity, but to moral and spiritual poverty. We need his brand of conservatism, an active conservatism of personal and social renewal. The war on spiritual poverty Kristol proposed is worth fighting, and it needs foot soldiers and generals who are willing to wage it. 

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