I'm making a thread about a few arguments that happydud and I are going to have, and I wish to bring it to Massassi as a whole to respond. Here are the arguments:

1) Is the Alliance (from Firefly) is a soul-less super-government or is it not?
-- a) Yes.
-- b) No.

2) Is the Empire (from Star Wars) a soul-less evil super-government or not?
-- a) Yes.
-- b) No.

My answer for both is yes, and happydud's argument for both is no. Here are the general reasons we said why:

1-a) Yes, the Alliance is a soul-less super-government.
They are rarely shown to have human components to them, and when they do, they work more like programs from The Matrix than humans with jobs to do. The sherriffs of the outer worlds do not count (like in the train job episode) because they made a point to say that the Alliance wouldn't stop to help find stolen goods off a train they were on and protecting.

1-b) No, the Alliance is NOT a soul-less super-government.
Same as ones used for the Empire, mostly. The ONE argument given to me by sugarless works well enough -- the one Alliance guy in charge during the reever episode. We got to see the guy thinking on his own, he had a soul and wasn't a cog in the government machine.

2-a) Yes, the Empire is a soul-less evil super-government.
I really feel I shouldn't have to spell this one out. Dictatorship, super-weapon that destroys planets to instill fear in its citizens, faceless stormtroopers (a reason why Episode 3 is awesome when we see Cody)...

2-b) There were other reasons, but I believe this link given was the main one:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/248ipzbt.asp
Note that it's outdated (Episode 2 had just come out), if nothing else.

I hope I see some supporters for happydud on this thread

P.S. I called this thread "because I like to cheat" because I don't think we were suppose to bring this argument out in the open... just a little playful joke, is all.

Alliance... I don't know. Firefly was cool and all but I always saw the Alliance as some obligatory bad guy organization.

The Empire's just cool. Soulless or not. At least, if we leave out the "lolz stormtroopers cant shoot" and other lame things in the movies and stuff. IMO.

Empire's evil for the same reason Nazi germany was evil. Hence the stormtroopers and Lucas saying he based it off of the rise of totalitarian regimes :p

Well I'm not going to say that the government isn't souless at all - look at the two by two hands of blue guys. But there's always reever guy.

And I still think that the train job episode should count. not because of the sherriff, but because it kind of shows it from the angle that working against the Alliance isn't necessarily always good. That and in all fairness, the soldiers really did have someplace to be.

empire are cool and good, i agree with the article, anderaan will have been hippies anyway, god hates hippies.

don't watch the other.

I think the Empire isn't evil, except for the higher ups. You do a lot of peace missions in TIE Fighter, and they certainly protect their supporters (That one mission where you have to protect the one big transport thing, when pirates in Y-Wings and shuttles attack it)

See, I don't think we can really judge the Alliance. We never saw much of it.

The only parts we did see were through the eyes of lawless thieves.. So of course they're going to be recieving the 'rougher' end of the proverbial stick.

Crap, gotta go. More later.