Originally posted by: C3PX
I love the faith we have in mankind. And by mankind of course I mean the good guys in a work of science fiction. Must we add a darkside to everything?

Ask George. He's the one who decided the Jedi were a cultic monastic order whose members took children from their parents[a], trained them to use weapons from a very young age, denied them human relationships with other people[c], ran their organization on the basis of a faulty interpretation of a prophecy[d], sought to spy on and assassinate political leaders without due process[e], denied the sapience of other beings that developed culture and used human language[f], and generally made fools of themselves.

Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon were trained from very young childhood, and they turned out okay, except for misreading the prophecy and creating Vader. Anakin was trained from childhood, and he ended up slaughtering the Jedi and enabling the murder of billions under the Empire. Luke was trained as an adult, and he managed to convert Darth Vader to the Light Side -- something the remaining Jedi Masters believed could not be done -- and withstood the temptations of Darth Sidious.

I ask you, what moral do you draw from this? The moral I draw from this -- and I give George Lucas all due credit putting something of meaning in the PT that actually makes the OT look better -- the moral I draw is that the Jedi failed because they denied young children the freedom of conscience/thought and militarized them at a young age. Luke flourished as a Jedi because he had developed a solid moral and ethical footing before embarking, of his own free and informed will, on the Jedi path. Although I have not studied Mr. Lucas's politics, I believe he is generally liberal, and the moral I have derived is in accord with liberal principles, as well as certain left-wing beliefs about the roles of military and religion in contemporary American society.

[a] TPM
AOTC
[c] AOTC
[d] PT, passim
[e] ROTS
[f] TPM