If you’re graduating from college or high school this month, maybe someone will give you Charles Sykes’s 50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn in Schools (St. Martin’s Press, 2008). It’s not bad, starting with its short and appropriately sour rule #1: “Life is not fair. Get used to it.”

Many of the rules emphasize the need to work hard in a competitive environment: “The real world won’t care as much as your school does about your self-esteem…. No matter what your daddy says, you are not a princess….Life is more like dodgeball than your gym teacher thinks…. Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it opportunity.”

Other rules advise patience: “You are not the first and you are not the only one who has gone through what you are going through…. Grown-ups forget how scary it is to be your age. Just remember: this too will pass.” Sykes asserts the importance of both objective reality (“Pi does not care what you think”) and personal relationships (“Don’t forget to say thank you”).

Two rules in particular, if followed, would forestall lots of sadness: “Your sexual organs were not meant to engage in higher-order thinking or decision making,” and “You are not immortal.”

I mentioned the other day research by Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks into the causes of happiness among Americans. In his new book Gross National Happiness (Basic), he shows that self-ratings of happiness are statistically reliable, and then writes about “three basic things that make people happy: meaning in their lives, control over their environment, and success in creating value in the world. And the way people get these things is not with money, or power, or fame—it is with their values. People who are serious about healthy values in their lives, families, and communities are much happier than others.”

WOW: You examine “the politics of happiness” and come to some conclusions about liberals and conservatives that would surprise our academic colleagues who stereotype conservatives as emotionally rigid, insecure, and angry…

ACB: I look at strange data results all day, but the evidence on liberals and conservatives surprised even me. People who say they are conservative or very conservative are nearly twice as likely to say they are “very happy,” than are people who called themselves liberal or very liberal. Conservatives are much less likely to say they are dissatisfied with themselves, that they are inclined to feel like a failure, or to be pessimistic about their futures. A 2007 survey even found that 58 percent of Republicans rated their mental health as “excellent,” versus just 38 percent of Democrats.

WOW: What is the relationship between economic inequality and unhappiness?

ACB: We hear from a lot of politicians these days that income inequality makes us unhappy. This is not correct. What makes people unhappy is the belief that they do not have opportunities to get ahead in life. What they often complain about, however, is income inequality. Studies show that when people feel economically mobile, they actually like income inequality even if they have less than others because it shows them what they can achieve. The irony is that when politicians fight income inequality they often lower economic mobility by wrecking the rewards to hard work. And this makes the real problem worse, not better.

WOW: The mantra of this year’s election campaign so far is “change,” with partisans evidently feeling a spurt of joy every time a candidate mentions the word. Why does that word have that effect?

ACB: This is due to what psychologists call the “Principle of Adaptation.” We get used to life’s status quo very quickly, and crave improvement as a source of happiness. This is why we get the most pleasure from a pay raise not when it shows up in our paychecks, but rather when we find out we’re going to get it. Lots of people forget that we are the most prosperous, free nation in the world. Americans are accustomed to feeling safe in their homes, being able to express their political opinions without being arrested, and finding food in the supermarket. Some politicians can and do degrade the importance of these things and convince us that we are unhappy—and only significant change will make things right.

That headline is a cliché, but a Syracuse University faculty member who crunches poll numbers is backing up that assumption with data. I asked Professor Arthur C. Brooks whether people who say they’re happy really are, and he backs up that belief with reports on brainwaves and such, If he’s right, what’s in his new book, Gross National Happiness (Basic), is important.

WOW: What do you mean by writing that “Happiness is a gift from above”?

ACB: Faith is an incredible predictor–and cause–of happiness. Religious people of all faiths are much, much happier than secularists, on average. In 2004, 43 percent of those who attended a house of worship at least once a week said they were “very happy” with their lives, versus 23 percent of those who attended seldom or never.

WOW: Later, you ask, “Does money buy happiness?” and arrive at some conclusions based on U.S. data but also comparisons between people in France and Mexico…

ACB: It probably isn’t too surprising to learn that money does not buy happiness. This is true as long as people are above the level of basic subsistence, which is true of virtually 100% of Americans. That’s one reason why America’s astounding economic prosperity, which is a wonderful thing and something I believe we should be deeply grateful for, hasn’t raised our happiness levels much over the past decades, on average. It also explains why a country like Mexico, which is a lot poorer than, say, France, can also be happier: In Mexico, 63 percent of adults said they were very happy or completely happy. In France, only 35 percent gave one of these responses.

WOW: According to your chapter on “the secret to buying happiness,” is it better to give or receive?

ACB: As a researcher, I always go where the data lead me. But I will confess to rejoicing a little every time I find that the data back up the Scriptures. Such is the case for charity. It is abundantly clear that when people give to others, they get happier, healthier, and even more financially prosperous.

WOW: Theologian Francis Schaeffer criticized Christians who make “personal peace and affluence” their goal. Keeping in mind the lives of Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah, Jesus, and Paul, what kind of happiness should be our goal?

ACB: I can’t stress enough that according to all the evidence, shooting for affluence or material comforts as a source of happiness is an error. As we see in the life and teachings of Christ and the prophets, happiness comes from an exercise of our good values, including a focus on service to others. Proper values are what bring a happy, well-ordered life. These things also bring prosperity. But to try to get personal happiness from material affluence is like trying to build a tall skyscraper by starting with the top floor.

Since many college students define “evangelical” as “anti-homosexual,” it’s worth noting “The Washington Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment” that a bunch of evangelicals signed last week. This Manifesto stresses “the Evangelical message, ‘good news’ by definition, is overwhelmingly positive, and always positive before it is negative…. Just as Jesus did, Evangelicals sometimes have to make strong judgments about what is false, unjust, and evil. But first and foremost, Evangelicals are for Someone and for something rather than against anyone or anything.”

The declaration, developed by evangelicals including Rick Warren and Os Guinness, opposes both “liberal revisionism and conservative fundamentalism.” Liberals “have tended to accommodate the world… to the point where they are unfaithful to Christ; whereas those more conservative tended so to defy the world that they resist it in ways that also become unfaithful to Christ.”

Theological liberals, the declaration contends, typically have “an exaggerated estimate of human capacities, a shallow view of evil, an inadequate view of truth, and a deficient view of God. In the end they are sometimes no longer recognizably Christian.” But the declaration also accurately criticizes the tendency of fundamentalism “to romanticize the past, some now-lost moment in time, and to radicalize the present, with styles of reaction that are personally and publicly militant to the point where they are sub-Christian or worse.” What’s important to remember: “The Gospel of Jesus is the Good News of welcome, forgiveness, grace, and liberation from law and legalism.”

What does all of this mean for public policy? “We cannot back away from our biblically rooted commitment to the sanctity of every human life, including those unborn, nor can we deny the holiness of marriage as instituted by God between one man and one woman.” At the same time, “we must follow the model of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, engaging the global giants of conflict, racism, corruption, poverty, pandemic diseases, illiteracy, ignorance, and spiritual emphasis.”

The declaration also calls for neither a Christian America nor a secularized one, neither a sacred nor a naked public square, but rather “a civil public square – a vision of public life in which citizens of all faiths are free to enter and engage the public square on the basis of their faith, but within a framework of what is agreed to be just and free for other faiths too. Thus every right we assert for ourselves is at once a right we defend for others. A right for a Christian is a right for a Jew, and a right for a secularist, and a right for a Mormon, and a right for a Muslim, and a right for a Scientologist, and a right for all the believers in all the faiths across this wide land.”

The declaration’s bottom line: “We should neither privatize nor politicize faith; the church should be identified neither with the religious right nor the religious left.” In contrast with “being unquestioning conservatives and unreserved supporters of tradition and the status quo, being Evangelical means an ongoing commitment to Jesus Christ, and this entails innovation, renewal, reformation, and entrepreneurial dynamism…. Evangelicals part company with reactionaries by being both reforming and innovative, but they also part company with modern progressives by challenging the ideal of the-newer-the-truer and the-latest-is-greatest by conserving what is true and right and good.”

David Miller’s God at Work thoughtfully examines the Christian presence in business over the past century. He notes that pastors pray for teenagers as they leave for short-term mission trips and Sunday school teachers as they begin a new semester, but not for certified public accountants around April 15, or salespeople and those working on commission at the end of the month or year, when quotas are due.

The basic problem is that many see church or missionary work as “fulltime Christian service” but business offices largely as places to earn money that can support the real Christian workers (with maybe some workplace evangelism on the side). Seldom is heard the encouraging word that business activities can be worthy ends in themselves – for isn’t God, who created us in His image, glorified when we show creativity through the products we make and the services we render?

Miller also points to an anti-capitalist ethos at many seminaries and among many pastors: “Many of today’s leading senior theologians, ethicists, and clergy are deeply influenced by Christian Socialism, branches of Barthianism…, liberation theology (emphasizing state-controlled economic structures, rejecting free markets, and viewing capitalist businesses as oppressors), and even some Franciscan and monastic strands that glorify poverty and simplicity.” He writes of ministers who court financial pledges from businessmen and then, from the pulpit, bite the hand that feeds them.

The deeper week-by-week problem is not ingratitude or hypocrisy but irrelevance, Miller points out: “Frustrated by the apparent lack of interest or uneducated response to the challenges they face in the marketplace, many workers and professionals simply give up on the church and turn instead to secular therapists, consultants, and self-help guides for ethical guidance and spiritual nurturing.”

Thomas C. Oden, a leading expert on Christian writings from 100 to 500 A.D., is the author of many theological works and the general editor of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. His new book, How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind, may upset what he calls “the common misconception that the flow of intellectual leadership in early Christianity moved from Europe to Africa, not vice versa.”

Oden told WOW that a “liberal bias wrongly assumed that Africa was inexperienced in understanding cultural conflict resolution and only needed larger doses of European enlightenment to solve its maladjustments. Many thus missed entirely the literary richness of the distinctive African Christian imprint on proto-Europe and the formation of the Christian mind. These misjudgments were passed on through graduate study programs.”

Oden contends that in Christian history “the flow of intellectual leadership demonstrably moved largely from Africa to Europe – south to north,” with Christian thought “cradled and nurtured” in Africa…. Africans were informing and instructing and educating the very best of Syriac, Cappadocian, and Greco-Roman teachers…. Inattention to this south-to-north movement has been unhelpful (even hurtful) to the African sense of intellectual self-worth. It has seemed to leave Africa without a sense of distinguished literary and intellectual history.”

Augustine, for example, was African, and his family wasn’t just hugging the Mediterranean coast: He “was born and raised far from the sea in a remote inland Numidian town (Thagaste) with mixed racial stock…. Among Augustine’s known family and friends were people who had Berber, Punic, Numidian, Roman, and even Libyan names.”

Tertullian, Cyprian, and Athanasius also were African, but African intellectuals ostensibly trying to overthrow European influence pay more attention to Europeans. Oden says that’s because “Many African academics are trained in European or American universities dominated by the failed assumptions of modernity.” He notes that a review of references in books by African intellectuals will typically show many more citations of Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Marcuse than Tertullian, Cyprian, Athanasius, and Augustine.

Oden hopes that young scholars and pace-setting universities will take on the task of righting the historical record.

The New Deal began 75 years ago this month, but its mythology is still fresh. Many Americans still believe that when Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated on March 4, 1933, the United States began to come out of Depression. Not so, declares Amity Shlaes’s The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression (HarperCollins, 2007), a splendidly-written history of governmental economic intervention during the 1930s.

Shlaes, a senior fellow in economic history at the Council of Foreign Relations, told WOW that the thesis of her book “is not especially controversial for economists, but it is controversial for historians who have not kept up with the economic findings. The argument is that the government made the depression worse.” Shlaes makes that argument based on abundant research and thoughtful analysis.

Roosevelt’s most famous line was “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself,” yet Shlaes writes about government officials intimidating business during the 1930’s and experimenting so much that they “scared the markets. Today, we watch business television and know unknowns are bad for the stock market. Roosevelt was king of the unknowns. One day he would be for big business, the next day he hates big business.” Roosevelt, she says, was “mercurial,” and that’s no way to run a White House. The result was a petrified market, year after year through the 1930s, with Washington misspending funds that could have been used by business to create more jobs.

The standard apologetic for FDR, of course, is that he saved America from revolution, but Shlaes as she did her research “had no sense that Americans wanted revolution. The Democratic platform in 1932 was as placid and moderate as could be. Americans didn’t really want revolution; they just wanted to have growth back.”

Both Obama and Clinton received favorable press coverage from December 2007 to last month, according to a study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs: 83% of Obama and 53% of Clinton stories were positive. But just before the Texas and Ohio primaries some reporters became rambunctious, and we should expect to see more of that.

Why? Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “It is an axiom of political science in the United States that the only means of neutralizing the effect of newspaper is to multiply their numbers.”

A generation ago the number of news outlets in America was the lowest ever in proportion to our population, and liberal reporters who virtually monopolized media could write and say the darndest things with little risk of public chastisement. In the Internet and talk radio age, much has changed.

Exhibit 1: the turnabout of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who early in February reacted to one Obama victory by saying, “I felt this thrill going up my leg…. [Obama] seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament.” Widely ridiculed for such over-the-top treatment, Matthews regained some reportorial prestige just before the Texas primary by aggressively questioning Kirk Watson, a former Austin mayor who is now a state senator and an Obama supporter.

“What has he accomplished, sir?” Matthews demanded. “You say you support him. Sir, you have to give me his accomplishments. You’ve supported him for president. You are on national television. Name his legislative accomplishments.” The poor politician’s answer was instructive: “Well, I’m not going to be able to name you specific items of legislative accomplishments.”

Clinton supporters would probably have had the same problem, but Matthews pressed on: “Can you name any? Can you name anything he’s accomplished as a congressman?” Watson, appearing as dumb as Sherlock Holmes’s Watson: “No, I’m not going to be able to do that tonight.” Matthews: “Well, that is a problem isn’t it?”

Yes, it is, and the press adulation that Obama received until recently may have created a backlash. A candidate benefits when reporters give him messianic status, but when they start to report that others are treating him as a messiah, the worm has turned. A Lexis-Nexis search showed an average of 11 articles per month with “Obama” and “messiah” in them during 2007, 48 during January 2008, 56 during the first half of February, and 153 during the second half of the month.

Late last month the discomfort of liberal columnists became increasingly evident. Time’s Joe Klein: “Something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism. …” The Los Angeles Times’ Joel Stein: “the Cult of Obama.” The New York Times’ Paul Krugman: “The Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality.” ABC’s Jake Tapper: the “Helter-Skelter cultish qualities” of “Obama worshipers.”

NBC’s Saturday Night Live also made fun of mediacrats who kiss up to Obama. And the unkindest cut of all, from The Tonight Show’s Jay Leno on the eve of the Texas and Ohio primaries: “If you believe the media, Barack Obama was born in a manger.” Obama’s free lunch may be over.

Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s wrote about the American tendency to use “crisp, clear and unadorned language” in business dealings, only to turn to “bombast” and “relentless pomposity” when indulging in supposedly-poetic public speaking. But de Tocqueville thought that realism would eventually win out—and so it has in most presidential elections of the past 30 years, even when the campaigns initially were full of air. Obama’s brilliant oratory so far has allowed him to escape specifics, but he eventually will have to go beyond the question of who opposed the war in 2003: the real question now is what to do in 2008. An article by Angelina Jolie in The Washington Post late last month, with the surprising headline “A Reason to Stay in Iraq,” was worth a thousand bombastic speeches.

Jolie argued that the U.S. should not squander what the troop surge has achieved, an opportunity to make “humanitarian progress” that will be lost if American forces pull out precipitously. Although Cosmogirl.com readers voted Angelina Jolie #3 on their list of desired presidential candidates (behind Oprah and Jon Stewart, ahead of Bono), she apparently is not on McCain’s list of possible running mates—but he should run with what she wrote.

If the race is McCain vs. Obama, the older senator will needs to pop the younger’s halo of humaneness. One way is to listen to Jill Stanek, the whistle-blowing nurse who saw close-up at an Illinois senate committee hearing Obama’s opposition to protecting even babies born alive after failed abortions: “Obama’s clinical discourse, his lack of mercy, shocked me.” The Chicago Sun-Times ran a cartoon of Obama holding a sign with “LIVE BIRTH ABORTION” on it, God reaching down from heaven to a baby in front of the state senator, and Obama yelling at God, “You keep out of this!”

Is McCain up to criticizing Obama (or Clinton) on abortion? Perhaps not, but GOP honchos should talk with Clarise McFarlen, a 16-year-old from Wichita, Kansas, who—like Obama—is of a mixed racial background. At first excited to hear of Obama’s candidacy, Clarise changed her mind when she learned of his position on partial-birth abortion: “My heart just stopped. If you support killing babies, there’s no way you can have true compassion.”

Continuing through this year’s political R’s, let’s mention a couple of things about religion: All the candidates have spoken of their religious beliefs, yet as Alexis de Tocqueville described Americans in the 1830s, “It is often hard to know from listening to them whether the main intention of religion is to obtain everlasting joy in the next world or prosperity in this.” Or votes.

Journalists wrote and spoke the most about Mike Huckabee’s beliefs: A Lexis-Nexis search shows “Huckabee” and “religious right” appearing 893 times during the three months before the Texas and Ohio primaries. Religious liberal Obama, though, typically avoided such characterization: His name and “religious left” appeared together only 28 times during that period. Huckabee received press criticism for an Iowa ad that called him a “Christian leader,” but few fussed about a South Carolina brochure that praised Obama as a “committed Christian” who is “called to Christ.”

Obama has benefited from messianic hopes, and indulged them by (among other things) saying that he and his supporters can become “a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different than all the rest.” But he should not be ridiculed as lightweight because some of his fans swoon: He is delivering the “social gospel” that became prominent a century ago more skillfully than anyone else has done in recent decades.

Obama’s profession of faith invigorates many and scares few because it is horizontal rather than vertical, with an emphasis on finding community rather than communing with God. Community organizers Obama worked with two decades ago saw “a part of me that remained removed, detached, that I was an observer in their midst. And in time, I came to realize that something was missing as well — that without a vessel for my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart, and alone.”

Obama says his joining a church “came about as a choice, and not an epiphany.” Choices do not bother secular Americans, epiphanies do. Joining a church to fight loneliness makes it as unobjectionable as joining a social club, but his affiliation serves as an antidote to evidence-less charges that Obama is secretly a Muslim. He says, “I’ve been to the same church, the same Christian church, for almost 20 years.”

Obama’s Christian affiliation also gives him the opportunity to dip into language that has resonated with many Americans in prior religious left campaigns such as those of William Jennings Bryan in 1896, 1900, and 1908. Bryan, of course, lost all three times, because of the American tendency to – sooner or later – make reality-based decisions. More on this next time.