Thanks for the information, but it’s very difficult for me to reconcile that contempt with libertarian thoughts. Nietzche is also someone whose thoughts sound very liberal/progressive, mostly I guess because of the amorality.
I’m more of a St. Thomas Aquinas, kinda gal. A philosophy student that I met once told me that Nietzche saw himself as a Protestant Aquinas. So I guess even the intelligentsia don’t think entirely for themselves. Then they condemn people who support those who either think like them or can communicate successfully to them. Wah!!! Buncha crybabies ;)
This is because people tend to equate religiosity with conservative thought and atheism/irreligion with liberalism and socialism. This wasn't always the case. For example, Mencken's nemesis William Jennings Bryan championed both religious fundamentalism and egalitarian causes, which was hardly atypical at the time. The association of fundamentalist religion with the political Right is a fairly recent phenomenon in the US, less so in the UK, and not at all in continental Europe.
The fundamental divide between Right and Left has always been about whether one believes in some form of natural inequality vs. thinking that any non-egalitarian society is an artifact of our institutions, something that can be done away with through the right type of social engineering. Both egalitarians and anti-egalitarians had religious and non-religious people in their ranks. From this definition, the agnostic or atheist Spencer, Nietzsche, and Mencken (or, to contemporary audiences, a more familiar example would be Ayn Rand) were clearly Right-wingers.