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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

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1 star:		(4)

 

 

Peter Schweizer is the master at busting open locked doors. In Makers and Takers he clears up common misconceptions about conservatives that the left feeds America through the mainstream media. Not only is the content interesting, but Schweizer writes in an entertaining way. This book is the one you MUST read; but a warning: once you begin you'll be so addicted you don't want to stop!

Peter Schweizer has elevated the national debate again. Rising above the he-said/she said din of cable news debates, Peter has produced a well-researched and fascinating analysis of the psychology that is inherent in liberalism. By reviewing scores of peer-reviewed, large-scale public surveys; Peter exposes many misperceptions that are regularly promoted in the media.

The public has generally accepted many of the precepts of the liberal message: Conservatives are mean, self-centered, cheating, uncharitable, and unhappy - the facts just don't bear this out.

In a sense all of these false beliefs and constructs define factitious disorder syndrome. Better known as Munchausen syndrome, these disorders are characterized by exactly the same self-delusional and malingering traits exposed in Makers and Takers.

If Munchausen by proxy means inflicting the disorder on others, then surely the United States is the left's proxy. Those who are naturally inclined to resist personal responsibility and accountability find a happy and willing enabler in liberalism. Since the primary motive of Munchausen is to obtain sympathy, nurturance and attention; the drumbeat message of liberalism over the last 40 years is surely a sirens song and a likely motivation to perpetrate this fraudulent view of conservatives.

The question I have is this: If one man, researching publicly available data on his own can produce this work, how could the thousands of so-called political science professors and researchers have missed it all this time?

finally a book that explains the basis for liberal and conservative philosophies and does so in a way that shows how the left in america are a paradox of themselves...this book showcases why the left in america think the way they do, act the way they do, and go about their daily lives in a manner that is more hypocritical than anything...full of quotes, stats, and stories that explain why the left in america, from its politicians to the media to special interest groups, dont even stand for what they say they believe in and they go ahead and say it anyway...a must read for anyone who wants to understand the political ideologies of people go much farther than how they feel about certain political issues...their political ideologies are a reflection about the very foundaitons about how they view life in general...entertaining and useful because although the content does not praise the right, it does use evidence that supports the right and allows the reader to make his/her own decisions based on the reading

I've re-analyzed the surveys that Schweizer reports (which are readily available online) using SPSS 15.0. Based on my replication, there are several interesting methodological "choices" that the author makes to draw such grandiose conclusions.

Even though the surveys measure political views using 'continuous' items (e.g., a response format that ranges from 1 ["Extremely Liberal"] to 7 ["Extremely Conservative"]), the author compares only the highest extreme (7) and the lowest extreme (1) throughout the book. From a statistical standpoint, this is problematic because it ignores trends in the middle and looks only at the relatively few people who place themselves at either political extreme (on the General Social Survey, this equals 4.7% of the sample, or 2,394 of 42,096 respondents; this number drops even lower when comparisons are made due to missing data in the comparison variables).

Here is a representative sample of the problems this causes: On page 20 Schweizer analyzes the General Social Survey and claims that 23% of liberals and only 14% of conservatives feel that Jews are especially violent. I re-ran this analysis (using Schweizer's exact methodology) and here are the results when you examine the whole political spectrum, going from 1 (Extremely Liberal) to 7 (Extremely Conservative):

1=22.7%; 2=12.2%; 3=9.1%; 4=10.8%; 5=14.6%; 6=11.8%; 7=14.1%

See any anomalies? Hmmm... That "Extremely Liberal" group looks funny, doesn't it? And it's nothing like groups 2 or 3--the folks who called themselves "Liberal" or "Slightly Liberal," respectively. The problem is that very few people identified themselves as Extremely Liberal. In this instance, that 22.7% is 17 of 75 respondents. So, on the basis of what 17 of 75 people said, Schweizer wants us to believe that Liberal ideas tend to make people anti-Semitic. You just have to ignore the fact that only 34 of 279 people (12.2%) who called themselves "Liberal" (group 2) agreed, which, by the way, is a lower percentage than that of people who called themselves "Extremely Conservative." But that's not worth mentioning, is it? Schweizer sure doesn't think so.

Are you getting a sense of the goofiness yet? Well, here's another example in case you still have blind faith in Mr. Schweizer:

On page 142 Schweizer uses the same survey (GSS) to show that Liberals use drugs and alcohol to cope with anger at "five times the rate" of Conservatives. Here we go again (Remember, 1 = Extremely Liberal and 7 = Extremely Conservative):

1=30.4%; 2=5.9%; 3=6.4%; 4=6.3%; 5=2.3%; 6=6.3%; 7=5.3%

Wow, that Extremely Liberal group is doped up, isn't it??? Well, that's because 7 of 23 "Extremely Liberal" people agreed that they drank or used drugs to cope with anger. That's right, SEVEN of TWENTY-THREE people. What about "Liberals"? Not so much. Only 8 of 135 agreed. Get the picture? Well, just in case, let's do one more:

On page 142 Schweizer uses the GSS to conclude that Liberals experience extreme rage more often than do conservatives (22% to 15%), based on their responses to a scale of rage that went from 1 (little rage) to 10 (extreme rage). Looking for those folks who rated their rage a 10 (the same way Schweizer does), here is the full political spectrum:

1=21.7%; 2=13.3%; 3=12.1%; 4=13.1%; 5=13.1%; 6=13.6%; 7=15.8%

Man, those "Extremely Liberal" folks are sociopaths, huh? Yup, all FIVE of them. That's right, 5 of 23 -- that's how Schweizer got 22%. And yes, Schweizer did wrongly round 15.8% down to 15% for the Extremely Conservative group for some reason. Perhaps 16% sounded too angry. (And again, let's just conveniently ignore the fact that smaller proportions of Liberals reported the same level of rage than did Conservatives or Extreme Conservatives.)

Schweizer says that the GSS is an authoritative survey and he's right. But when you chop up data any way you please, you can "prove" anything, even with the best survey data in the world. Trust me, using Schweizer's same goofy methodology and the same surveys, the "Extremely Conservative" folks look pretty bad on items related to attitudes toward Blacks, interracial marriages, segregated schools, whether whites have a "right" to live in all-white neighborhoods, and whether wives should have reproductive choices. But that's junk statistics, and it's not worth reporting, even here on Amazon for free. Unless, of course, the Hoover Institute wants to fund my new book project: "Acres of Fakers."

If you want to see if "liberalism" is related to how people behave socially on the basis of survey data, you should use "inferential statistics." For example, you might start by looking at how these various survey items CORRELATE with one another. At the very least, correlations would make use of all the data, and you can ask the question: Are people MORE angry the MORE liberal they claim to be? This seems to be the kind of question that Schweizer would love to answer, but apparently he didn't like the results. I've looked at the correlations and they are microscopic. For example, the correlation between political views and opinion of Jews as violent is .03. In other words, there are no meaningful linear relationships between how we rate ourselves along the political spectrum and the behavioral phenomena that Schweizer tackles in his book (at least not that I've discovered yet).

So in short, Schweizer's research is wrought with undeniable statistical errors and shortcuts. As such, this book is valuable in two ways: 1) it underscores the reason why the academic peer-review process is vital in true scholarly work, and 2) it also demonstrates the quality of "research" funded by the Hoover Institute at Stanford.

This is a very strange book. Its central thesis reminds me more of a playground argument between 5 year olds than any sort of serious critical analysis. It is basically that there exists a crude stereotype of conservatives in this country, promulgated in academic institutions, Hollywood and the media, that they are greedy, mean, angry and prejudiced. But in fact, the reverse is true! Liberals are the greedy, mean, angry and prejudiced ones!

Backed up with cherry picked and questionable data, the latter part of the thesis is claimed to insubstantiate the former, which is largely drawn from - again - cherry-picked details, already insubstantial in that they consist of mere quotes from celebrities and random articles. The whole thing, as I noted, has the feel of a childish squabble. Little of substance is actually explored, the author instead content to score cheap political points, trying to prove that his "side" is the "best" side. What he has done in the end, is take down one straw man and replace it with another.

Perfect for those wishing to self-congratulate, instead of think.

It's been anecdotally the consensus for awhile that conservatives are generally happier, more family-oriented, and so forth than liberals, but until Schweizer's book, no one had bothered to amass the necessary statistics on the matter. MAKERS AND TAKERS does our understanding of American society a considerable service in this.

There are two areas where Schweizer's tome could have been improved. First, its self-congratulatory tone would be off-putting to a liberal -- and it's liberals who would benefit most from absorbing and pondering the objective information it offers. Second, Schweizer had the opportunity to score a grand slam by extending his treatment to FAKERS: persons nominally self-supporting, but whose positions are mostly or wholly sinecures that demand little from them. The distribution of political allegiances among such persons -- government workers; featherbedded workers in unionized industries; marginal employees in public schools; and the like -- would be illuminating whether or not it confirmed Schweizer's larger thesis.

All the same, MAKERS AND TAKERS is informative in its objective data and thought-provoking in its implications. Four stars.

If you've ever wondered how liberals can come to swallow a lot of the perspective they espouse, you'll find this book quite insightful and helpful. Very worthwhile to read.

If you are conservative, you have to read this! "Makers and Takers" is chock full of solid research proving conservatives love more, give more, and generally are happier and better people.

When asked "Would you endure all things for the one you love? More than half--55 percent of conservatives--said yes, compared with only 26 percent of liberals" (p 31). And even worse, when asked "Is it your obligation to care for a seriously ill spouse or parent...71 percent of conservatives said it was...Less than half (46%) of liberals agreed" (p 31). This is a staggering difference in morality between the two groups.

Research shows conservatives want children more, and are more fertile. And this is not surprising, given the additional research showing how narcissistic liberals are when compared to conservatives. When 1,195 university students were studied, liberals were full of egocentrism. The same results were found in a study in Germany.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, liberals were more likely to be alienated from their families. On the other hand, conservatives were ""significantly more likely than other parents to display positive, nurturing emotions toward their children" (p 44).

And here are some really disturbing results from the respected World Values Survey:

Liberals were much more likely to agree to lie.

"More than a third of liberals (34 %) said they would cheat the restaurant out of the money" (p 118).

More likely to cheat.

Less likely to take the blame when they did something wrong.

"More than a third (35%) of progressives said 'there are some situations where adultery is understandable'. Only 3% of conservatives agreed" (p 114).

At the bottom all of this, I suspect, is religion. Those who do not believe in God have no reason to follow the 10 commandments.

But good grief, they don't even feel obligated to take care of a sick spouse or parent???

The argument of Makers and Takers is that conservatives have it right, behaviorally, and liberals are deeply troubled. Thus, it will give heart to the right and dyspepsia to the left, though it is written in the spirit of bemused interest, not in that of an angry screed. The core of the argument is built upon survey research. If the survey research is accurate, this is a significant book, for it traces a large number of behaviors which, it is argued, characterize those of each broadly-conceived political persuasion. Schweizer argues that behavior and ideas are closely intertwined and proceeds, he believes, to demonstrate it here.

With all turning on the reliability of his evidence, there is a consistent attempt to correct for potential survey errors. For example, conservatives are more happy with their incomes than are liberals. That could be, of course, because they make more money. However, Schweizer is careful to point out, in this case, that the liberals skew toward the negative, while the conservatives skew toward the positive when, in fact, they each make the same amount of money. Conservatives are likely to see the book as successfully and scientifically confirming their intuitions, while liberals are likely to see it as little more than polemic and propaganda. It all comes down to the reliability of the survey instruments themselves. Schweizer certainly takes them seriously, but how broadly accepted are they by dispassionate social scientists? I believe that it is a shortcoming of the book that he does not go to great pains to assure his readers (with hard evidence) that these survey instruments are reliable. There is also a great deal of anecdotal evidence, but that is notoriously slippery, though it does make for an interesting read. Unfortunately, since the book is written for a popular audience it is unlikely to be reviewed by survey research experts and be validated or dismissed. That is too bad, since the subject is so important. On the other hand, a popular audience will find it to be an interesting and engaging use of statistical information (particularly those who are conservative).

A journal of liberal hypocrisy.
Peter Schweizer has written a quick an insightful read confirming or challenging your pre-conceived notions with regard to the difference of the actual practices of giving and work habits between liberals and conservatives. The book is a fast read laden with facts, data, quotes, anecdotes and writing excerpts from a wide range of studies as well as individual liberals in the media, popular culture, politics a and academia. Schweizer uses their own quotes, studies and actions to put truth to the lie that liberals are more concerned with other people in purely altruistic terms. But rather he shows that they are largely transfixed by their jealousy of other peoples' money no matter what their own wealth. You find that all your favorite liberals are here: Nader, Clinton (both), Jackson, Edwards, Turner, Couric, Soros and many more. Each shown to be hypocrites with regard to their own espoused standards. This is not all however; the book compares the average liberal to the average conservative and finds the same dichotomy exists. Schweizer shows how the tendency toward jealousy and stinginess is not only not generally a trait of conservatives, but rather the domain of the modern liberal as it was going back to Marx. He also shows that even many liberals have recognized these failings and flaws in the liberal character. Challenge your beliefs, read it!