

What can nerds do for the election? - bdr
http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=353

======
MHollender
Why are most nerds either Liberal or Libertarian and almost never
Conservative? I think the main reason is that they only look at Conservative
politicians (who suck, but that's what you can expect from a democracy) and
not intellectuals: John Kekes, Thomas Sowell, Michael Oakeshott etc.

Scott touched on an important thing about this serene confidence stuff, but in
historical scales, that's not how it works. It's always been Progressives who
were so damned sure that their ways are illuminated by the Light of Reason and
everybody else is a superstitious dumbass. And it was the Conservatives like
Montaigne or Pascal who were full of doubt. Of course, when democracy became
inevitable Conservatives had to learn to fake confidence and they usually did
it with this faux Christian-Fundie-Nationalist crap because the average voter
sadly needs some sort of a simple message, they aren't reading any books or
something. But that's only a recent development, not older than a hundred
years, approximately. On a historical scale, this self-righteous approach is
mostly Progressive. Therefore, don't support a Liberal. Not even he doesn't
seem to be as full of shit as Comte or Rousseau were. Not even if the recent
post-Goldwater decades Conservatives became more full of shit (the religious
type of shit) than Liberals. It might be a good idea in the short run but only
makes things worse in the long.

