Odd Statistics

by Joe Miller

I came across a couple of different sets of statistics today, and I'm not really quite sure what to make of them.

The first is courtesy of the Pew Research Center (via Liberty Corner) which shows that Republicans are happier than Democrats (see the pretty chart here). According to Pew, 45% of Republicans report being very happy as compared to just 30% of Democrats and 29% of Independents. Even when one controls for other factors (i.e., that Republicans are more likely to be wealthy and--big surprise--people with high incomes are happier than people with low incomes), there still remains a large gap between Republicans and Democrats. Indeed, the survey has shown Republicans to be happier than Democrats every year since 1972.

Perhaps ignorance really is bliss?

The second bit of data comes from Andrew Sullivan who reports that:

Most disturbing to me are the high numbers of self-decribed Christians favoring torture: only 26 percent of Catholics oppose it in all circumstances, while only 31 percent of white Protestants rule it out entirely. If you combine those Christians who think torture is either never or only rarely acceptable, you have 42 percent of Catholics and 49 percent of white Protestants. The comparable statistic of those who are decribed as "secular," which I presume means agnostic or atheist, is 57 percent opposition. In other words, if you are an American Christian, you are more likely to support torture than if you are an atheist or agnostic.

I really have no idea what to say here. In my really cynical moments, I think that it was, after all, deeply religious, very devout Christians who managed to rationalize the Inquisition and the various periods of witch trials. OTOH, both of these rather embarrassing episodes were pre-Enlightenment, and I had thought that most Americans--Protestants in particular--were pretty well steeped in Enlightenment values. You know, the sorts of values that hold that individuals matter qua individuals and all that jazz.

I've argued before (I won't name names here, but I suspect that at least a few of you can guess with whom I've had this particular argument) that Christianity purged most of its hyper-violent tendencies after the rest of the West dragged Christians through the Enlightenment and that the same thing will likely happen with the hyper-violent strains of Islam just as soon as the Muslim world goes through its own version of the Enlightenment. My interlocutor disagreed. Perhaps he was right, though for the wrong reason. Maybe what these statistics show is that Christianity still hasn't actually purged itself of all that Old Testament-wrath-of-God crap.

Anyone who has anything more insightful, please leave your suggestions in the comments. Or, if you've nothing insightful, feel free to leave any particularly witty snark instead.