Mental Illness and the Left

Source: ResearchGate.

It has been claimed that left-wingers or liberals (US sense) tend to more often suffer from mental illness than right-wingers or conservatives. This potential link was investigated using the General Social Survey cumulative cross-sectional dataset (1972-2018). A search of the available variables resulted in 5 items measuring one’s own mental illness (e.g., ”Do you have any emotional or mental disability?”). All of these items were weakly associated with left-wing political ideology as measured by self-report, with especially high rates seen for the “extremely liberal” group. These results mostly held up in regressions that adjusted for age, sex, and race. For the variable with the most data (n = 11,338), the difference in the mental illness measure between “extremely liberal” and “extremely conservative” was 0.39 d. Temporal analysis showed that the relationship between mental illness, happiness, and political ideology has existed in the GSS data since the 1970s and still existed in the 2010s. Within-study meta-analysis of all the results found that extreme liberals had a 150% increased rate of mental illness compared to moderates. The finding of increased mental illness among left-wingers is congruent with numerous findings based on related constructs, such as positive relationships between conservatism, religiousness and health in general.

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Saturday Morning Irony

Played 18 holes of golf with my brother Saturday morning at Sleepy Hole Golf Course. Played terribly, but one thing I saw had my laughing behind my mask.

While awaiting my brother’s arrival, I was hanging around the bag drop and practice green, a gentleman walked by wearing his mask (as most were. YAY!) It was the logo on the mask that caught my attention.

Gadsden flag.svg

Biden speaks from his (black) heart


As conservatives have pointed out to deaf ears for so long, the Democratic party views Blacks as a monolith the have in their pockets forever. They see no difference between inner city multi-generation welfare families and my former neighbors, married school teachers living in the suburbs. They’re all just Black votes to be taken for granted, and for so long that worked, but maybe no longer.

Sometimes they DO listen

Back in June, The Hill ran a story about the Iowa governor preparing to sign an Executive Order restoring rights to convicted felons. I posted it here to ensure that I was accurate in saying that is not true, as Virginia still requires individual application for rights restoration. A nice exchange of thoughts and information followed.

Today, The Hill ran a story saying the EO had been signed, but was again reported as the “last state” to do so. I recalled the earlier discussion here and decided to email the editors @ The Hill. Here is what I sent:

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