How honest are conservatives and liberals?
Peter Schweizer, writing at Examiner.com, looked at various research studies on honesty and discovered the following:
- 57 percent of those who call themselves “very liberal” said it was OK to cheat on your taxes compared to just 20 percent of those labeling themselves as “very conservative” (World Values Survey).
- Consider the following: “You lose your job. Your friend’s company is looking for someone to do temporary work. They are willing to pay the person in cash to avoid taxes and allow the person to still collect unemployment. What would you do?” Forty-nine percent of liberals would go along with the scheme, while only 21 percent of conservatives said they would agree to it (National Cultural Values Survey).
- Liberals were two and a half times more likely to say they illegally download music on the Internet (Barna Research).
- College students who lean toward “conservatism” have “higher levels of ethical values” (Journal of Business Ethics).
- There’s a link between “political liberalism” and “lying in your own self-interest” (Journal of Psychology).
Schweizer provided other examples and went on to point out:
The honesty gap is … not a result of “bad people” becoming liberals and “good people” becoming conservatives. In my mind, a more likely explanation is bad ideas. Modern liberalism is infused with [the] idea that truth is relative. Surveys consistently show this. And if truth is relative, it also must follow that honesty is subjective.
Sixties organizer Saul Alinsky, who both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton say inspired and influenced them, once said the effective political advocate “doesn’t have a fixed truth; truth to him is relative and changing, everything to him is relative and changing. He is a political relativist.”
Ah, the pitfalls of living in a postmodern world. Thank God that both liberals and conservatives have access to objective Truth. Now, if they’d only embrace it.
HT: Make It Man



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back to top18 Comments to “How honest are conservatives and liberals?”
Let’s not be too hasty to pat ourselves on the back. What this might (ironically) show, at least in some cases, is that liberals are actually *more* honest about how dishonest they would be in certain hypothetical situations.
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Rostin: If you’d read the linked article you’ll see that Schweizer covered that possibility.
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Notwithstanding Rostin’s criticism, the study relies on people’s self-identification as “liberal” or “conservative.” In my experience, many people refer to themselves as conservative, even though the WorldMag crowd would consider them to be liberals.
Outside of the Religious Right, “conservative” generally refers to a broad sector of society, including fiscal conservatives who are socially moderate. At WorldMag, “conservative” includes only ardent social conservatives and “liberal” refers to everyone else.
So, before y’all start patting yourselves on the back, consider that the favorable stats may be due to the honesty of pocketbook conservatives and not the alleged honesty of social conservatives. After all, I’d more likely believe something if it were reported in The Economist than if it were reported in Jim Dobson’s daily e-mail blast.
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That’s embarrassing. I apologize for commenting before reading.
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In the next issue of Convenient Theories For Us Monthly …
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Those results are a bit surprising.
The comparison seems to be between people identifying, on an intellectual level, right and wrong and making claims about how they would behave. I wonder if conservatives behave more ethically, or just talk they’re more ethical.
In other words, asks someone if they’d cheat on taxes, and conservatives say “no” in greater numbers. But if we did a survey of people convicted of tax fraud, what percent would identify as conservative and what percent as liberal?
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Yikes. Lots of errors. Redo.
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Those results are a bit surprising.
The comparison seems to be between people identifying, on an intellectual level, right and wrong and making claims about how they would behave. I wonder if conservatives behave more ethically, or just talk more ethically.
For example, ask someone if he’d cheat on taxes, and conservatives say “no” in greater numbers. But if we did a survey of people convicted of tax fraud, what percent would identify as conservative and what percent as liberal?
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Let’s do a survey on here. How many of you have ever cheated on your taxes?
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How many of you have ever cheated on your taxes?
I have not.
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Kbells, How would you know if those who answer are telling the truth? According to some who posted before your question, conservatives are likely to lie about what they would or would not do, while liberals would cheat, but tell the truth about it in an anonymous poll. And if a person would either lie or cheat about paying taxes, why would they tell the truth about their political position in an anonymous poll?
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Senators Vitter and Craig were ea caught with their pants down. These are hardcore rightwingers who have fought to stay in office. Elliot Spitzer was an uberLiberal, but he confronted his corruption and made the honorable choice to resign.
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I would rephrase the question, “How many have deliberately cheated on their taxes?”
I am positive that no one in America has ever filled out their taxes accurately. By ‘accurately’ I mean paid exactly the right tax, getting every last deductible that you deserve correct. It is not humanly possible, even if you use the 1040EZ.
Line up the top ten tax accountants on planet earth. Have them do your taxes and I can guarantee no two will come up with the same answer.
So if it is not humanly possible to calculate the proper tax and the error is in your favor, then you are technically a criminal. Cheater? No. Criminal? Yes.
What candidate is for fixing the tax system? Chirp, chirp, chirp
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Since anecdotal examples seem to be flying here, I’ll toss out an observation…
Most of my work involves interacting with… well, to put it rudely, dirtbags of all races and credos. You know who I mean. People for whom ‘law’ is nothing more than an obstacle to breach in order to get to their desired objective. That’s everything from money from a bank’s dysfunctional ATM to skipping child support payments for their baby mama. And the remarkable thing is that, yes, they are indeed very forthcoming about their ‘badniss,’ as one well-tatted dude put it to me.
The trick is, they aren’t being forthcoming because they value honesty. A quick scan of their morals show that they don’t give a bottle of Beam for any kind of morality. The reason is that they do not feel guilt. Hey, if you don’t think it was wrong, then you have no shame in admitting to it. For an example, I refer you to my personal nominee for Biggest Criminal Scumbucket of the Year Award. http://www.wpbf.com/news/15194935/detail.html
So I think that maybe we aren’t looking deep enough into this. I doubt that conservatives and liberals necessarily have a huge divide between them when it comes to cheating on taxes. But I think that there is a huge divide between them when deciding whether or not cheating on one’s taxes is wrong.
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“Most of my work involves interacting with… well, to put it rudely, dirtbags of all races and credos. You know who I mean. People for whom ‘law’ is nothing more than an obstacle to breach in order to get to their desired objective.”
Gorg- so you work with the Bush Administration?
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From the article.:
“The quick answer might be that liberals are simply being more honest about their dishonesty.
However attractive this explanation might be for some, there is simply no basis for accepting this explanation. Validation studies, which attempt to figure out who misreports on academic surveys and why, has found no evidence that conservatives are less honest. Indeed, validation research indicates that Democrats tend to be less forthcoming than other groups.”
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Lumps – You are a broken record with a siongle theme. It’s getting old and you contribute nothing positive to the discussion.
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All polls and surveys aside, the fact remains that truth is not just a relative and subjective notions to use or mis-use conveniently as an instrument to get our way or avoid inconvenience. Truth will find you out in the end.
Even freedom itself owes its existence to truth. Jesus said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” (John 8 something).
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We have rental properties, so always have a tax guy do our annual bidding. For several years we used a high-powered tax attorney who came highly recommended. The year after we did a re-fi, we were zinged by the IRS for something that was deducted erroneously. When I asked our guy about it, he said he always deducts it and if you get away with it, good and if not, just pay it. The next year we switched to another accountant who was recommended by someone at church and is also an LCMSer.
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