the happy conservative

So we’ve established that for believers, God explains a part of life that is seemingly contrary to the human ideal, i.e. unfairness. For believers, God settles the accounts in the end, because life as we know it is but a small part of our total existence.

For atheists, the job of squaring accounts is settled by legion upon legion of bureaucrats, whose sole purpose is to take from the successful and give to the weak, infirm, incompetent, ignorant, and unlucky.

But this sort of government god worldview creates some happiness issues.

Before I stretch the metaphor too far, I’m going to wind-up with a strike against the army of benevolent blues.

Where the government decides to make things fair by taking away from Sosa and giving to the likes of, say, Matt Stairs, they create a disincentive for Sosa to succeed. After all, why should he, it will just be taken away anyhow. Even worse, I think, is the destruction of happiness. One of the things that creates happiness in life is the feeling of a job well-done. Sosa, I think, will be a somewhat sadder fellow because he will feel that something he’s earned has been taken from him.

But that’s ok, right? I mean, now Matt Stairs gets to succeed as well. Just ask anyone on welfare, I would guess they’re probably unhappy about it. The welfare state, the benevolent umpire, creates a sort of dependency and entitlement. Stairs doesn’t feel like he’s earned that extra homer, but rather that the world owes it to him. These are different things, and the latter brings a sort of bitterness and cynicism to life. I’m a citizen of America, gosh darn it. They owe me cradle to grave stolen bases and a .760 batting average.

The upshot of this story is that my erstwhile bête noire was right, but for the wrong reasons. Liberals don’t turn to atheism because liberals are inherently better at critical thinking and therefore must conclude that God does not exist. Atheists decide that God doesn’t exist for some other reason, and then become liberals because the state must step up to the plate and square the playing field. And as state sponsored loserdom creates a disincentive to succeed on your own accord and a sense of spoiled brat entitlement, liberals also tend to be bitter, unhappy, and vengeful people who like to toss out words like bigot and homophobe and theist to bolster their self-esteem.