Liberalism is the freeing of the individual from the tyranny of tribe, class, caste or community.

Science Fiction is big on evolution, namely the evolution of humanity - either from long term exposure to the freakiness of space, or conscious evolution by tampering with genes. Either way it's seen as the ultimate solution to the secular version of original sin (how terribly nasty we humans can be), or the inevitability of the ongoing march of science.

So, will space change humans? Unlikely, simply because of our passion for technology. Humans have always used technology. Clothing is a form of technology - it is not natural, it is a deliberate manipulation of nature. The Naked Ape set out from Africa for colder regions long ago and, via the invention of clothing, took its environment with it, keeping its body at the same required temperature. Astronauts also take their environment with them - via spacesuits, oxygen tanks and, as will be likely, centrifugal gravity habs. All this negates the need to biologically adapt to the environment. Did the Inuit evolve hairy bodies like the polar bear, or blubbery skin like the walrus? No, they developed suitable clothing and, after thousands of years, remain recognizably human in all their traits and features. When Europeans encountered them after millennia of separation, they did not encounter aliens. Hereditary changes have been negligable and we remain, as a species, unchanged.

What about conscious evolution then? Will we, with the technology that, supposedly, will soon be within our grasp, change ourselves into post-humans? Well, the problem with this thesis is that humans have been able to alter biological features for thousands of years - pre-dating even civilization. We did it with selective breeding - of dogs, cattle and wheat grains. No lab coats were necessary for this, yet we've never done it to ourselves. And it's not because we've been too humane or moral to do it either. Humans have routinely slaughtered, enslaved and eaten other humans. Infanticide was a common method of birth control. So why have we never bred or created 'new' human types from slaves or unwanted children, the way we've done with dogs? Clearly there has to be a reason, an enduring reason that has lasted thousands of years. What that reason is, I do not know. But it's not an idle question and until we can answer it, we cannot take the idea of conscious evolution for granted.

"Civilization emerges with complexity, exists because of it, and disappears when complexity does.

Complexity is the base of civilization, and civilization, by definition here, can disappear only when complexity vanishes. It may be true that specific polities can rise and fall within a civilization, but political complexity itself must disintegrate for civilization to disappear.

For this reason the study of rising and falling complexity serves as a monitor of the phenomenon termed civilization..."

Joseph Tainter - The Collapse of Complex Societies.

Enlightenment humanists have maintained, and continue to maintain, that social affairs can be managed with the same rational tools that are used in science. Reason, enlightened by education, can better manage human affairs than the manipulative, irrational fumblings of history's ancient regimes.

The problem is that this has all been tried before, and Reason was found wanting. Kennedy's presidency was famed for its administration of the 'best and the brightest' - highly educated specialists applying 'modern' methods of analysis to the complex problems of foreign policy. Reason and rational analysis were applied with full force to the war in Vietnam. Computer programs were unleashed for diagnosis, with streams of incoming data updating the picture day by day and fresh orders being sent to Generals and Aid programs. And it all failed spectacularly.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks too thought that the application of scientific reason could be applied to modernise the State, with an emphasis on education, careful central planning and staged five year plans. The Jacobins sought to use cold rationality to mould the State when they unleashed The Terror during the French Revolution - Mao sought to do the same with the Cultural Revolution. Pol pot went even further with the concept of Year Zero. And neoconservative planners predicted what they thought would be a rational outcome to the 'liberation' of Iraq.

What all these ideologues had in common was that they sought to simplify complexity. Reason is thought to be the device by which complexity can be understood, reduced and tamed. But complexity, which is to say Reality, cannot be so easily pinned down. It defies simplification. It makes a mockery of even the most elaborate of human ideologies.

Human beings are products of nature, and nature is not reasonable. Human reason is really just a parochial delusion. It is a tool, not a key. A specialised yet limited tool.

"Society, that it may live better, creates the State as an instrument. Then the State gets the upper hand and society has to begin to live for the State."

Ortega y Gasset, 1930.

"Just look at all the money that has been spent on the problem - all the laws we have put in place, all the educational programs we have implemented, all the police operations that have swept through our inner cities. And yet all we have succeeded in doing, apart from creating a self serving bureaucracy dedicated to the problem, is to have imprisoned thousands without really solving the problem at all. In fact, all we have achieved is the criminalisation  and marginalisation of the poorer sections of our society. Surely we should admit now that the solution to the problem lies in not trying to solve it at all. We should legalise it, and thus regulate it. That, to me, appears to be common sense."

Alfredo E. Nonexisto. Chairman of the Campaign to Legalise Violence.
City of Arsoles, 2035.

On the subject of Egypt's uprising, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I put it to you that the fawning and narcissistic gushing of the western media on the subject have fallen short of reality, and that indeed they have overlooked some vital pieces of evidence.
Exhibit A: Many young demonstrators carried or painted on themselves the national flag of Egypt. Not America. Not Anarchism inc. Not trade union banners. These people are very, very patriotic. And Egypt has a young population, with a sizable proportion of young males. Patriotic young males.
Exhibit B: Egypt's economy was in the doldrums before the demonstrations and is in tatters now. The anger at Mubarak was stimulated by increasing poverty, the rising price of food and by the unemployment of a large number of young people. And this in a regime that already heavily subsidises bread and other vital foodstuffs. Being able to vote and air dissent in a free press does not in itself produce agricultural abundance and jobs. Freedom does not automatically produce prosperity.
Exhibit C: Egypt has no oil. Egypt is heavily reliant on aid. Egypt has a large deficit. Egypt has very little in the way of a manufacturing base. No democratic regime can conjure away the problems associated with these things, no matter how nice they are. Niceness produces neither competence nor wealth. It only pleases tender bourgeois hearts who watch from the comfort of their living rooms.
Exhibit D: The price of food is shooting up. The price of oil is going up. The price of metals is skyrocketing. Inflation stalks the world - because of population boom, a growing Chinese middle class, the US treasury's second round of quantitative easing and this year's droughts in Asia.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I put it to you that, while the Islamic Brotherhood may indeed be as tame and toothless as many claim, there are still other dangers surrounding the creation of a democratic government in a country that has never had a true democracy.
We may not see an Islamic Republic in Egypt.
But we may indeed see a Weimar Republic.