This roundtable with six SF writers (Cory Doctorow, Pat Murphy, Kim Stanley Robinson, Norman Spinrad, Bruce Sterling and Ken Wharton) on "The Social Future" is interesting...if for nothing else than to give an idea of how solidly liberal the SF community is.

Norman Spinrad is the shrillest of the bunch, with stuff like:

Q: What do you think people in the future will regard as being the greatest overall mistakes made during our time?

Spinrad: The election of George W. Bush. Second, the disappearance of the Soviet Union, leading directly to an unopposable American hegemonism. Not that they aren't related.

Yeah...500 years from now, our posthuman progeny will spend most of their genetically-enhanced cognition on lamenting the election of George W. Bush. And the disappearance of the Soviet Union was a mistake? Huh?

And then...

Q: What's the most significant current social trend? It's hard to say for sure, of course, but off the top of your head...

Spinrad: I'd say the Jihad; there is one, you know. There isn't any ‘war on terrorism’; terrorism is a tactic; the war is Islamic fundamentalism versus ‘the Crusaders,’ aka ‘the Great Satan,’ aka the United States, aka the ‘West,’ aka the 21st Century. The Jihad has been openly and loudly declared by the jihadis, and as far as Islam is concerned, Bush has openly declared the other side in Iraq. This will affect everything. It already has. It's a holy war that's been going on for 1400 years or so, and this is only the latest and most dangerous phase. Osama bin Laden, after 9/11, said that he would destroy civil liberties in the West, and in the US he's already succeeded.

[emphasis mine]

Yeah, because we've pretty much lost all the rights guaranteed in the Constitution in the past four years. Might it be possible that not being able to distinguish between your overblown perception of a police state and an actual police state is a stupid and dangerous misperception?

Doctorow has some interesting stuff to say about information and intellectual property, but most of the comments are really pretty short-sighted, liberal talking points about Bush's policies.