At the Accelerating Change conference I attended at Stanford last weekend the undisputed star was David Brin. (Left, from his Web site.)

Brin is a science fiction writer, a physicist, a futurist, a skeptic, and a great public speaker. With no PowerPoints and few notes he held hundreds of very bright people in thrall for 45 minutes and made it look effortless.

Brin’s theme was the election. For the first time in American history, he said, a President won re-election by running against the Enlightenment, against Galileo, against pragmatism, against the very idea of criticism as a good.

Brin’s talk was a therapy session. “We need criticism,” he said. “Karl Popper said that if you're not making falsifiable statements you're not making statements.” And he could have added, you only learn when you change your mind.

Brin tried to put his finger on the key difference between losers Gore and Kerry on the one hand and the winner, Bill Clinton, on the other. It lay in Clinton’s attitude toward the other, toward the Red Staters of his native Arkansas who fear science, technology, and critical thinking. While liberals concentrate on their limits, Clinton praises them, says look at how far you’ve come, and if you only go a little further in your thinking imagine how much more you can do, for your children. “Stop using guilt, start using praise,” Brin said.

Thus Brin made a radical proposal that will never be adopted. “The way to drag them into the future is with love. Every block in New York City should adopt a small town in Ohio, invite them to New York City on vacation, and in return take a vacation there.” (Could the key to turning around America really be The Simple Life? It’s Brin’s playful way of speaking that leads to such silly speculation.)

Brin’s point here was “We have to stop acting out of our own self righteousness and recognize that we too may be subjects of propaganda.” For instance, “In every movie the villain is intolerant, and the hero shows eccentricity, all in the first five minutes.” That’s how you tell them apart. Suspicion of authority, eccentricity, tolerance of diversity…they’re beat into our brains every day, and so we respond to them.

Of course these are Brin’s values too. He shared his audience’s grief over the current Administration. He called them the “insatiable rich,” while liberals are capable of satiation. Liberal society created a diamond of income distribution – a few at the top, a few at the bottom, and most in the middle. The insatiable rich want the feudal triangle – a few at the top and everyone else at the bottom.

But “the most evil thing this Adminstration is trying to do is keep us from knowing what's going on. Only in an open society can we charge into the future.” And that open society starts when you accept two words – "yes, but." Yes I get your point, but this is mine.

Authorities who demand yes are bad kings. (Foolish serfs will give it to them and see anyone else as dangerous.) Good kings love yes, but. David Brin is the ultimate good king. He is the King of the land of Yes, But.