The Jedi: Good or Bad?

One of the other bloggers on Lone Star Times, Owen Courrages , posted an article by Bob Hayes titled, The Battle Of Endor Demonstrates The Evil Nature Of The Rebellion. In it, he defends the Empire as not being as bad as it was portrayed, and that maybe the Rebellion was the wrong side to pull for.

Further down the article, he starts to enumerate why the Jedi might be a lot more evil than we give it credit for. Some of the things he mentions:

• Ignoring violations of the Jedi code is fine. Doesn't matter that you know your apprentice is nailing the Queen and has gotten her in the Jedi Family Way. Don't turn him in, or insist that he make things right by resigning his Jedi status and becoming an ordinary family man, or abandoning his family for his higher calling. No, let him continue to muddle down the path to blatantly obvious moral crisis and destruction. It's more convenient that way.
• Building clone armies of soul-deadened warriors is fine.
• Killing people for the crime of not wanting to be in your corrupt and failing state anymore is fine.
• overriding the free will of others is fine.

There's more, but I think you get the jist.

The last one is something I thought about earlier, but have not brought up.

It seemed to me that there was some animosity toward the Jedi by the general populace, especially shown in Episode II. Why would this be if the Jedi were so pure and wonderful? By the time you get to Episode IV, you see several instances of the Jedi and The Force being referred to as an old and pitiful religion. (Darth Vader almost takes out one of the command staff on the Death Star for such a snide comment.) Why?

I believe this is so for many reasons, chief among them that the Jedi were not seen often, but they were "mysterious" and if you had any dealing with them, it was probably not a happy contact (much like our contact with police today). Look at how the club patrons in Episode II kept watching Anakin and Obi Wan. They were not exactly welcoming. (Not to even mention some of the drivers that cussed out Obi Wan during the chase scene right before....But that could be attributed to "road rage".)

I think one of the main reasons would be the concern of the Jedi to be able to "read" your thoughts or emotions or be able to use a Jedi Mind suggestion. Frankly, if I knew a whole class of people could get a little personal with my thoughts, I would be a bit freaked out by the thought of them being nearby.

This brought to mind (pardon the pun) the similar dilemma in Babylon 5. In the B5 universe, the Telepaths were also identified at childhood and were made to join the Psy Corp or take drugs to suppress the telepathic ability. This was donebecausee the ordinary citizen was very leary of telepaths running around in the general population. It is interesting to note that even in the B5 universe, this brought a great deal of conflict (the Telepath War) and division.

So, what are the similarities and contrasts? Discuss amongst yourselves........