Argentina President Javier Milei recently had some sharp words for the political left. But his observation is backed by more than his experience. Research makes it clear that the various strains of leftism, from today’s American Democratic Party to Democratic Socialists to green radicals to the tens of millions of voters who are attracted to progressive candidates and policies, are fueled by an emotional crisis. We beg our brothers and sisters on the left to consider why they do what they do.

Milei, a defender of laissez-faire economic policy, said he once “thought being on the left was a mental problem.” But what he eventually “discovered is that being on the left is a disease of the soul.”

It is “built on envy, hatred, resentment, unequal treatment before the law,” he said during a television appearance. Leftists and “are very violent,” and because “they have no way or arguments to answer, they go for physical violence.”

Contemporary examples of this are Antifa’s thuggery, the organized aggression toward and abuse of ICE agents and other federal officers enforcing immigration law, and the useful idiots who rioted over George Floyd’s death.

Long-time Issues & Insights friend Deroy Murdock argues persuasively that the Democrats have become “the party of cruelty and sadism.” During the pandemic, he observes, they “gleefully locked down their constituents, banned church services, barricaded California’s beaches, blocked Michiganders from their rural cabins, and forced COVID-positive residents into New York’s nursing homes, killing 12,473 previously uninfected seniors.”

Democrats also “closed schools for far too long, never mind that the virus barely affected children.” This isolated them “from their playmates” to the point that some “grew depressed and committed suicide.”

“This cohort is damaged for life,” says Murdock, a victim of a “sick, evil Democrat Party deliberately” that “steers citizens into, not out of, harm’s way.”

Why are they like this?

Milei’s assessment tells him their souls are disturbed. We won’t say he’s wrong, but the soul is a difficult quantity for humans to measure. Mental health, however, is more easily measured, and it’s plain that there is, as the headline of an American Affairs article suggests, a “Well-Being Gap between Liberals and Conservatives,” with the former feeling depressed and the latter showing higher levels of happiness and meaning in their lives.

This chasm “manifests clearly across all age groups and is present as far back as the polling goes,” writes Musa al-Gharbi, a Columbia University sociologist.

“In the General Social Survey, for instance, there has been a consistent 10 percentage point gap between the share of conservatives versus liberals who report being ‘very happy’ in virtually every iteration since 1972,”  when the survey was begun.

One possible explanation: There are “genetic and biological factors that simultaneously predispose” people with mental illness toward leftism and those with mental wellness toward conservatism. “Some strains of liberal ideology, on the other hand, likely exacerbate (and even incentivize) anxiety, depression, and other forms of unhealthy thinking.”

This isn’t new to us or our readers. Last year, we recommended that the Democratic Party get a wellness check. At the time, James Carville was showing clear signs of derangement (and still is), which were (and still are) “emblematic of the left’s descent into madness.” 

No one should be taken by surprise that the left is still cracking up. As we reported then:

The data from a 60,000-participant survey shows that conservatives are far better off emotionally than their counterparts on the left.

Nine in 10 conservatives self-report their mental health to be excellent (51%) or very good (39%). Those who consider themselves liberals are struggling, with only 20% saying their mental health is excellent and 26% believing it is very good.

Only 19% of conservatives say their mental health is poor, while 45% of liberals say they have poor mental health.

Two years earlier, while Joe Biden was still stumbling, bumbling and mumbling around the White House, Issues & Insights cited a study which found that “individuals with dark personalities – such as high narcissistic and psychopathic traits – are attracted to certain forms of political and social activism which they can use as a vehicle to satisfy their own ego-focused needs instead of actually aiming at social justice and equality.”

This provided a clear explanation, we concluded, for the existence of “the Democratic Squad, Antifa, global warming foolishness, the disturbing obsession with wokeness and destruction, censorship, forced compliance, and a dictator’s lust for dominance on the left.”

It’s obvious now that “the unstable, the cranks, the neurotic, the egomaniacs who feed on attention, the ruthless power seekers are drawn to the Democratic Party.”

Whether today’s left is driven by mental illness or a malignancy of the soul might never be discovered. All we ask is for the unwell to get the treatment they need. For the sake of our republic, don’t be crazy.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board