I generally love "Live From The Future" styled writing, but NZ Bear's "Dispatches from 2014" left more than a little to be desired.

The Prof touts it as a "Cautionary Tale," but I read it last night and then again this morning and I am having difficulty appreciating everything that it's cautioning against. On one hand, it appears that he's cautioning against everything he is against, but he even does so against National ID cards (4/7/14), which he says he's not adamently opposed to (or "wasn't" then, then being now). He's not exactly cautioning us to not take our enemy seriously enough as he suggests we are taking it too seriously by allowing the government to infringe on our personal liberties to give it the tools to fight terrorism (3/22, 4/7, 4/20, 5/22, 6/28). Nor is he cautioning us about taking the threat too seriously because in his future we retreat to and from the world (4/14, 5/2, 5/19) and do not protect ourselves against the upcoming biological threat (4/19, 5/7).

I certainly get a feel for what he believes that we should do (act aggressively abroad, protect our borders, and sacrifice nary a freedom), but there is no acknowledgement as to what happens when these freedoms conflict with one another. For instance, what if it would be helpful (or even essential) for vaccinations to have the government have comprehensive information on its people so that they can react more quickly to contagious diseases? I personally don't know exactly what we should do and Bear's article doesn't help, but literarily suggests that totalitarianism hangs in the balance.

I understand that Bear's dispatches do not necessarily mean that he believes that totalitarianism is imminent. However, the literary device he uses adds to the sense of hysteria that clouds the debate more than it clarifies it. Someone could easily write a similar set of dispatches from a future in which we have a totalitarian government because we acted too aggressively abroad. Perhaps in the other dispatches, our failure to make certain sacrifices at airports caused bigger attacks down the line which caused sweeping changes that could have been avoided with smaller changes earlier on.

The point is that we simply don't know. Bear doesn't really lay out, measure for measure, how our decisions now would lay out the bleak future he envisions. Nor does he provide coherent alternatives (though, in fairness, it's a cautionary tale and he doesn't have to). To be sure, the format of the page doesn't lend itself to detailed explanations. He makes references to things that he doesn't explain, which isn't a bad thing except that it hinders his ability to lay out a case against the various things that he is against.

Ultimately, it feels to me like another diatribe of how we're slipping towards totalitarianism. Freedom requires eternal vigilance and we ought to be on guard against those who wish to take our freedoms away. On the other hand, libertarian-minded people of all stripes (liberal, conservative, anarchist) have been warning about the upcoming totalitarianism for as long as I can remember. Even with the Patriot Act, the war on drugs, the terrorists, the RIAA, and so on, we are still more free than we've ever been. Certainly after 9-11 there was a call for more government in regards to military and anti-terrorism units, but there was also another surprising reaction. Support for gun control is lower than I have seen it in a very long time. People are talking about wanting to give guns to pilots to take on to airplanes.

Maybe the day will come with the United States will be totalitarian in nature. Empires rise and empires fall. However, it won't be Americans that are a part of the revitalization I've seen in this country since 9/11 that allow it to happen.

I don't know that there are any specific views in Bear's dispatches that I disagree with from a political standpoint, but he phrases things in such a way that most people won't disagree. Reality makes things more complicated than a decision between allowing plastic knives on airplanes and giving terrorist visas. We need to have a calm rational discussion about these tradeoffs that does not involve either side accusing the other of favoring totalitarianism or being sympathetic to our enemies.

There were two shining moments in Bear's piece, though.

First, the priceless line: "Just some bureaucrats who think they're cops because they've forgotten who the real enemies are." (5/22/14)

Second, even in the totalitarian future depicted, they still can't keep The Prof down.