Star Wars- The Jedi Order is the Bad Guy

Once upon a time, in an apartment far, far away, I read an article that totally changed my view on Star Wars (which has been on Spike the last couple days). It is Jonathon Vast's article "The Case for Empire." Here are some excerpts-

But the truth is that from the beginning, Lucas confused the good guys with the bad. The deep lesson of Star Wars is that the Empire is good. It's a difficult leap to make--embracing Darth Vader and the Emperor over the plucky and attractive Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia--but a careful examination of the facts, sorted apart from Lucas's off-the-shelf moral cues, makes a quite convincing case....

....Like the United Nations, the Republic has no armed forces of its own, but instead relies on a group of warriors, the Jedi knights, to "keep the peace." The Jedi, while autonomous, often work in tandem with the Senate, trying to smooth over quarrels and avoid conflicts. But the Jedi number only in the thousands--they cannot protect everyone.

What's more, it's not clear that they should be "protecting" anyone. The Jedi are Lucas's great heroes, full of Zen wisdom and righteous power. They encourage people to "use the Force"--the mystical energy which is the source of their power--but the truth, revealed in "The Phantom Menace," is that the Force isn't available to the rabble. The Force comes from midi-chlorians, tiny symbiotic organisms in people's blood, like mitochondria. The Force, it turns out, is an inherited, genetic trait. If you don't have the blood, you don't get the Force. Which makes the Jedi not a democratic militia, but a royalist Swiss guard.

And an arrogant royalist Swiss guard, at that. With one or two notable exceptions, the Jedi we meet in Star Wars are full of themselves. They ignore the counsel of others (often with terrible consequences), and seem honestly to believe that they are at the center of the universe. ...

...Lucas wants the Empire to stand for evil, so he tells us that the Emperor and Darth Vader have gone over to the Dark Side and dresses them in black.

But look closer. When Palpatine is still a senator, he says, "The Republic is not what it once was. The Senate is full of greedy, squabbling delegates. There is no interest in the common good." At one point he laments that "the bureaucrats are in charge now."

Palpatine believes that the political order must be manipulated to produce peace and stability. When he mutters, "There is no civility, there is only politics," we see that at heart, he's an esoteric Straussian. ...

...Make no mistake, as emperor, Palpatine is a dictator--but a relatively benign one, like Pinochet. It's a dictatorship people can do business with. They collect taxes and patrol the skies. They try to stop organized crime (in the form of the smuggling rings run by the Hutts). The Empire has virtually no effect on the daily life of the average, law-abiding citizen.

Also, unlike the divine-right Jedi, the Empire is a meritocracy. The Empire runs academies throughout the galaxy (Han Solo begins his career at an Imperial academy), and those who show promise are promoted, often rapidly. In "The Empire Strikes Back" Captain Piett is quickly promoted to admiral when his predecessor "falls down on the job."...

...So under Imperial rule, a large group of regional potentates, each with access to a sizable army and star destroyers, runs local affairs. These governors owe their fealty to the Emperor. And once the Emperor is dead, the galaxy will be plunged into chaos.

In all of the time we spend observing the Rebel Alliance, we never hear of their governing strategy or their plans for a post-Imperial universe. All we see are plots and fighting. Their victory over the Empire doesn't liberate the galaxy--it turns the galaxy into Somalia writ large: dominated by local warlords who are answerable to no one.

Which makes the rebels--Lucas's heroes--an unimpressive crew of anarchic royals who wreck the galaxy so that Princess Leia can have her tiara back. I'll take the Empire.

Read the whole thing- it's great and there is more great arguments that will forever change your view of Star Wars.

By the way, the reason why I was thinking about Star Wars and the Empire as being the good guy was because I was really bothered by quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial powers that the Jedi Order appears to hold before their fall. The Jedi Order appears to be a regulatory commission, with sweeping powers and few limits, and those violates certain principles about good government that we know are essential, mainly a lack of separation of powers, little responsiveness to the popular sovereignty of the people, and no limits on their powers.

Yes, the Jedi Order is like the FCC or EPA with magical powers- able to come up with rules on what is acceptable and what isn't, able to enforce those rules, and then able to judge whether their rules were followed to their liking. Imagine a government agency with those powers, able to step in and say 'I think what you're doing isn't fair (it isn't balanced, it takes advantage of people, it isn't environmentally friendly, it hurts Ewoks), and I'm going to correct the situation and make it fair (wielding lightsabers or fountain pens or executive orders), and afterwards, punish you (fines, death by force lightening, whatever).' Yes, the Jedi Order are the bad guys.