Originally posted by: lordjedi
One of the comics pretty much explained this. When they find a baby, and I mean an infant, that is strong in the Force, they convince the parents that the child will probably lead a better life among the Jedi. The children are not taken by force.

When you're a state-sanctioned warrior monk with a weapon at his side, trained in "aggressive negotiation," and capable of influencing people's minds ... yeah, they pretty much used force, or the implicit threat of force, to take those children*. Or they just paid the parents off. Either way, the idea of toddlers being raised by cloistered fanatical religious warriors is almost as offensive to me as Jar-Jar Binks.

Meesa rewrite Jedi training as thinly-veiled allegory of Taliban-funded madrassahs? Uh-oh!

* In addition to the obvious threat of physical violence, we also see the potential for constructive force (misuse of authority, pressure), Force-based powers of manipulation and deceit, or even outright kidnapping. Were such actions sanctioned by the Coruscanti Jedi cult and done for the "greater good," individual Jedi kidnappers would probably view their actions as service to the "Light Side" of the Force. Given the massive disparity in power between the Galactic citizen and the Jedi Order, as well as the unresponsiveness of the Galactic government, it is likely that the Jedi acquired their child-slaves with near impunity.