Artificial intelligence can view a photo of a person’s face and correctly identify their political leanings 61% of the time.  That's because conservatives smile and liberals don't.  If you want to be happy, choose conservatism.

 

Artificial intelligence can view a photo of a person’s face and correctly identify their political leanings 61% of the time.  Guess what the difference is between the face of a conservative and a liberal?  Answer: A smile.  Here’s how an article on Fox News explains it, “The study, using deep learning to predict ideology from facial photographs: expressions, beauty, and extra-facial information, found that AI can predict a person’s political ideology with 61% accuracy when analyzing a photo of a person.”

 

Aristotle & Happiness

So, if Aristotle’s main quest was happiness, the answer is conservative politics.  It just makes sense: Conservatives generally want to conserve the way society is, so obviously, they are happy about the way it is.  Liberals, on the other hand, are by definition unhappy with the way the world is, so they are unhappy about it.  Now for the second step in the process: Arthur Brooks points out in his book Gross National Happiness, that what liberals seek is more power for the government, which…. wait for it…. makes them LESS happy!  So, it’s a spiral that circles downward: Liberals are unhappy with their lives, and when they get the changes they want, they are even less happy.  Makes you want to join the conservatives, doesn’t it?

 

Faith

What else makes us happy?  Well, faith makes people happier.  70% of atheists vote Democrat.  Well, there you go.  If you put together an atheist who is liberal, you’ve got an unhappy person.  Family also makes us happy.  Liberal atheists have fewer children than conservative religious people.  While listening to Catholic radio a few years ago, a woman participating in the March for Life stated, “We’re going to out-produce them.”  Meaning, liberal atheists don’t have as many babies as conservative religious folks, so it’s going to end badly for the sad crowd.

 

Friends, but not the TV Show

Watching the TV show Friends might make you LESS happy because having REAL friends is better than having TV friends.   Well, who wants to hang around with a grumpy liberal atheist?  Obviously, they have fewer friends, so we’re another step down the circular spiral toward misery.  Work also makes people happy.  But if you’re a liberal atheist with no friends, you’re probably not a very agreeable co-worker.  And, it’s quite obvious that employers prefer happy to unhappy workers.  So, could we see the application of AI in employment, where it purposely discriminates against liberals, because they are unhappy?   In our book Biblical Economic Policy, Sergiy Saydometov and I included a chapter claiming that, based on Biblical scripture, work is good.

Virtue

In his presentation on happiness at the recent Acton Institute, Jay Richards explained that having virtue makes people happy.  That means doing good for others.  But liberals don’t want individuals to do good for others, they want the government to do it.  One of my favorite quotes from my fellow Christian Economist,