<p>What is so hard for everyone to understand that Democrats and liberals are not the same thing and Republicans and conservatives are not the same thing. They are related but not the same. The Republicans have some very non-conservative views and the Democrats have some very non-liberal views.</p>
<p>A true conservative does support limited government in pretty much all respects. Republicans don’t always follow that pattern. Vice versa for Democrats. You have to be careful when talking in absolutes. Republicans and Democrats do not represent the absolutes of their general branch of the political spectrum.</p>
<p>It’s funny that most of you don’t think engineers are liberals. Most tech lovers are liberal. Innovation is about progression. Progressives are Democrats. Bill Gates is a liberal. Steve Jobs is a liberal. Many well known engineers is the past had liberal leanings. Buckminster Fuller had Utopian like ideas. Regions were there were high in technological innovations were regions of large gay communities, such as Silicon Valley. </p>
<p>Pretty much, every engineering discipline are ran by liberals. The only one that is aligned with conservatism is probably aerospace being that it is a big component of the defense industry, which is supported by conservatives.</p>
<p>knowledgeiskey, you have a penchant for making bold generalizations.</p>
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<p>This is laughable. Do you know most tech lovers? Have you polled a representative sample of tech lovers? Tech lovers are no different than any other significant group in the population. They pretty much run the gamut as far as their politics are concerned.</p>
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<p>Innovation, in practice, is as much about money as it is about progression.</p>
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<p>Another false statement. What about the Bull-Moose Party? It’s formal name was the Progressive Party and it was a Republican spin-off. Progressivism is relative. It really just means a political movement for reform. In the United States, that has often been more aptly applied to Democrats and other liberal parties, but as an actual political concept, it is not strictly related to the left or right. But that doesn’t change the fact that political progressivism is largely disjoint from technological progression. You don’t have to be liberal or conservative to favor technological progression. That is more of a human thing.</p>
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<p>Don’t be ridiculous. Take a logic class and then look at this statement again. Correlation does not imply causation. Unless the only people working on microchips were gay, then I fail to see a connection here. Space travel was developed largely in Texas, so I suppose I could argue that regions where there is a high incidence of conservatism tend to produce more innovation. That would make just about as much sense as what you claim.</p>
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<p>And who exactly are each of the engineering disciplines “ran [sic] by” and what makes you think that they all lean left? Honestly, what on earth are you talking about? CEOs stereotypically lean right since they like to hang onto their money, and who runs engineering companies?</p>
<p>So, I come back to my original claim in this thread. Engineers represent the entire range of the political spectrum, and in my personal experience, tend to be fairly moderate. Even those that I have met and dealt with who identify as Republican or Democrat tend to be fairly moderate in their own beliefs.</p>
<p>Living in Canada with two citizenships, I align myself with the New Democratic Party in Canada and with the Democratic Socialists of America in the U.S. I favor the European model of parliamentary government which includes health care for all and a better social safety net than in North America. Some might say you pay more taxes in those countries but you also get better value for your government there. You won’t see the massive homeless and poverty problems in the European countries like you do in many major U.S. cities and in some of the large Canadian cities.</p>
<p>An engineering education teaches you how to think. Any engineer who blindly subscribes to a political party’s ideology is wasting his or her education. I tend to find that engineers have their own views, and support the group that most closely aligns with those beliefs, even if they don’t match exactly.</p>
<p>Real engineers realize that the US doesn’t actually have politics, voting doesn’t matter since Wall Street gets its man every time and the “debates” in public are just gladiator shows to keep the dumb masses occupied and focused on things other than the corrupt politicians looting them for trillions and sending them to die somewhere for Wall Street. Of course some are direct beneficiaries of this government and support it, such as those who supply weapons to the largest terrorist group in the world which has already conquered and occupied 2 sovereign nations.</p>
<p>It seems to me that most educated people are liberal or independent because they can think for themselves and can separate fact from fiction/bs.</p>
<p>On the other hand, most people’s political leanings are caused by their financial situations. If someone, regardless of their education, benefits more from conservative politicians, then that person will vote for conservatives and vice versa.</p>
<p>I suggest that policies should be implemented in a “lifecycle” sort of way…</p>
<ol>
<li>We define our ideal requirements</li>
<li>We map out (design) how these requirements are met</li>
<li>We develop a prototype based on the design</li>
<li>We test, verify and validate the implementation</li>
<li>We implement the prototype as the actual policy</li>
<li>We put in the means to sustain the policy</li>
</ol>