Friday, March 18, 2011

Americans, St.Patrick's Day and the Morality of Drinking

Dig this from the Pew Research Center's findings on American morality and St. Patrick's Day. This week, Americans will celebrate Ireland's patron saint, and not necessarily because they have Irish heritage. For many this means excessive drinking, though the tradition is not morally neutral, at least in the US. A full 61 percent of Americans polled find excessive drinking morally wrong, Pew reports. There is also a huge disparity on the morals of drinking between self-identified liberals (50%) and conservatives (71%). An even greater divide runs along the education line: forty-three percent of those with a college degree disapproved of excessive alcohol consumption, while those with a high-school education or lower did so at a whopping 74 percent.

Also see Pew's study on American moral perceptions of sex, drugs and cheating on taxes.

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