It's all in the branding

When a scientific study can be summed up with this opening line--"People think they're more liberal than they really are"--well, I just can't resist.
Where? Where are these people who find the liberal label so irresistible that they have to claim it, even when they aren't? Certainly not at any gathering I've ever attended in the states of Kansas or Missouri. Most people I know are scared to death to use the L-word, even if it does fit them. Who would be crazy enough to identify as a liberal when the shoe doesn't fit?
Nevertheless, that is the lead of a recent story in the New York Times about a British study of political attitudes worldwide.
The researchers asked 136,000 people over the course of 20 years to rate themselves as righties or lefties, on a scale of 1-10. Those answers were then compared with how well people agreed with the statement, "Incomes should be made more equal."
The result: People thought of themselves as more left-leaning than their answer to income distribution indicated.
The researchers theorized that the more educated people--who identified themselves much more inaccurately as left-wing--were in fact, fiscally conservative. They were liberal on social issues, yet voted with their pocket books as fiscal conservatives.
Well, okaaaay....I guess the fact that this was a study of people in 82 countries makes it more understandable. It's far more accepted to call yourself a liberal elsewhere, where there's a more live-and-let-live approach to social issues than in the US. At least in Europe. Perhaps "conservative" just doesn't have the same cache there and elsewhere as it does here.
But you have to wonder about a study that's been going on for 20 years. In that amount of time, the popular definitions of liberal and conservative have changed.
It's kind of like Sarah Palin now calling herself a feminist because she believes in woman power to enact all kinds of restrictions for women on abortion. You see, right-wing feminism means seeing your gender as equal and rising up to recognize the power of life. This has startled some of us who've taken all kinds of verbal abuse for years over this very term. If there's one thing we've learned, it's that being a feminist is the same as being an anti-Biblical, scaly demon who is an abomination to nature and God. Now it's okay? What next?
This from a wing of the Republican Party that has spent the past three or four years debating whether people who disagree with them are "true Republicans" or just pretender in-name-onlies who need to be purged.
Hmmm....Does this mean we'll soon see Karl Rove and his ilk lobbying to be called liberals because they believe in liberty from taxes and regulations? Will Rush Limbaugh suddenly stop talking about "femi-nazis" and start schmoozing with the "femi-nicies?"

But back to the study. Apparently one other thing researchers found was that people who think of themselves as lefties, and who really ARE lefties, also were happier than their right-of-center counterparts.
Happier about what is not clear. But yeah, I can see it. Maybe they're just happy not to be so confused.