Why Conservatives Should Love Star Wars

Note: For those who have yet to see the The Force Awakens, there are items in this story that can be classified as spoilers. 

Star Wars: The Force Awakens continues the George Lucas saga, and while Lucas has sold his stories to Disney, the spirit of the story remains. I am going to make a controversial statement considering that Lucas is a Hollywood leftist, and I suspect that Lucas viewed Star Wars as a statement against the United States, but the reality is that his story has conservative themes.

While many Star Wars fans are convinced that the first three episodes don’t really exist, they are the underpinning of episodes four through seven. The first three parts of the Star Wars saga had a more complicated tale to tell- namely how a Republic becomes a totalitarian state. Telling the tale of the collapse of the Republic is a more challenging tale to convey than the simple story of good vs. evil that permeated chapter four through six.

In the Phantom Menace, the Republic was paralyzed with political intrigue and showing signs of fraying. In the beginning of the movie, the trade alliance attempted to take over the peaceful planet of Naboo. Naboo mixed a monarchy and democracy, a peaceful version of England, and the Republic itself was a loose alliance of various worlds, with the Jedi acting as the main enforcer of the peace. The Jedi attempted to mediate the conflict between the trade alliance and Naboo, but their efforts failed to keep the peace. Behind the scenes, a powerful new force was working to overturn the Republic and destroy the Jedi order.

In history, Republics often are weakened from within before collapsing. After years of Civil War, Rome shifted from being a Republic to an Empire. Augustus accepted the crown of Emperor while maintaining the fiction of Republic, but the fiction would eventually fall by the wayside. The Roman Republic collapsed due to responsibility of Empire and increased corruption within the government. Money became the tool to bribe the electorate and various interest groups as domestic spending increased.

The Empire does not automatically mean shifting to totalitarianism. The British Empire encompassed nearly a quarter of the world population for almost 300 years before breaking up. England's decline after World War II was due to the socialistic policy being enacted as well financial obligation due to winning World War II. Yet, England never fell prey to dictatorship despite being an Empire.

Adolf Hitler, one of history's real life evil men, arose from the ashes of Germany parliamentary government established after the First World War. He got himself elected by taking advantage of the chaos caused by the Great Depression and the feeling of betrayal that many Germans felt after losing the First World War. He used democratic rules to overthrow the democracy that existed. And no one seems to complain, as many Germans were ready to allow democracy to die just to end the chaos.

Many Romans felt similar thoughts when Augustus ended the Republic. When Augustus took power, he ended years of civil war and strife while restoring order. Order took precedence over freedom. The Star Wars Saga indicated that similar thoughts were going through many of the Senate when they conferred special power upon Supreme Chancellor Palpatine to form a special Army to deal with the separatist movement and later surrender their authority to the Chancellor. (Of course, Palpatine is also the evil one behind all of this.) Palpatine used the Senate laws to undermine the Republic as the Republic fought against a separatist movement. The Civil War ended the Republic.

What became obvious from the first two episodes is that the bureaucracy controlled the Republic and what economic freedom existed was crippled. The trade alliance itself was a sign that the trade between worlds was not free but determined by might. While Lucas failed to follow through on this theme, it was a theme that was and is important. The average British actually saw more economic freedom and more political freedom during the time of the British Empire. In Lucas' Republic's end days, it would appear that corruption took precedence over legal economic activities.

Before an Empire or a world power goes to the dark side, domestic and economic freedom is stifled. Today, we can seriously argue that the present United States government is starting to stifle political freedom and religious freedom, much of this activity coming from the left, which would be the politicians that Lucas supports. Can we make the case that the United States is close to where the Republic was in episode one? Over the past decade we have seen conservative groups targeted by the IRS, a couple in Oregon were fined six figures because they didn’t want to bake a cake for a gay wedding due to their religious belief, and we have climate alarmists and their political allies discussing the use of RICO laws to criminalize scientific disagreements. Green technology subsidies have become nothing more than graft and handouts for crony capitalists allied with the present administration, and the battle over the Import/Export bank was a battle over crony capitalism and who should profit from government handouts.

The argument can be made that increased domestic spending and programs such as Medicare and Social Security will eventually lead to bankruptcy and threaten our Republican government. Republicans can collapses upon the weight of its domestic policy as the United States is retreating from the world before it becomes the Evil Empire of George Lucas’ imagination. Can anyone truly believe that a world dominated by radical Islamic fascism or a resurgent China will be a better world than a world dominated by the United States?

Economic debates rarely make for good movies but civil war and insurrection does. In the first three parts, the insurgents were the bad guys trying to overturn the Republic. Lucas also showed that there were those within the Republic, who sided with the insurgents. The parts four through six represented a more simple view of good vs. evil. The Rebels are true freedom fighters and they are fighting a true evil. The most direct comparison were those freedom fighters who opposed Hitler and the Soviet Empire. In the first three parts, we see a Republic weakened by domestic concern not readily identified and corruption seeping through the Senate.

Another aspect of the Star Wars saga is how empires rise and fall. African scholar George Ayittey noted that the most successful African empires were loose confederations of vassal states. The Ghanaian Empire lasted for some 900 years. By contrast, the Zulu Empire of Shaka, centralized and authoritarian, lasted a mere ten years. The tighter the control from the center of an Empire, the more resistance it garnered. As Princess Leia observed in the fourth episode, A New Hope, the tight control of the Empire will result in more worlds slipping through its hand. The Empire crumpled within four decades of gathering power.

Showing this slow collapse of the Republic as forces outside and within the government undermined its structure was not easy to film or to write. In the first two episodes, Lucas did a decent job of showing this regression of the Republic. In the third episode, he shows how the Republic ended through legal methods as the Senate gave the Emperor his power. The Republic merely ended with a whimper and an applause. While many critics complained that the first three Star Wars did not compare to the original, the story was still engrossing. The third episode made the transition to the final three chapters as we witnessed the final transformation of the Republic into the evil Empire. This transformation was paralleled by the transformation of Anakin Skywalker from the Jedi protégé to Darth Vader. The Darth Vader story was enthralling simply because he wanted to do good, but once he entered the dark side of the force, he was trapped. His anger took hold and he became a servant for evil. Order took precedence over freedom. Anakin Skywalker fell for the idea that he could bring order to the universe by an alliance with the Emperor as well as save the life of his wife. In the end, Anakin hears of his wife's death and order is not restored as the rebellion against the Empire replaced the Civil War that spawned it.

In the next three episodes, we see the rise of Vader’s son and again, Vader is still under the illusion that order can be had through might. In the Empire Strikes Back, Vader exposes his true identity to his son and offers his son the chance to join forces with the idea of bringing stability to the empire, a deal that his son refuses.

In the first three episodes, Anakin Skywalker was supposed to be the fulfillment of the prophecy, the Jedi to bring balance and order to the universe. Instead the prophecy would be fulfilled by his children. When you see the first six episodes together, it becomes Darth Vader’s story and we see how his choices differ from his son. Both Anakin and Luke were given an opportunity for ultimate power. Anakin fell for the illusion that his power could bring order to the universe, whereas Luke understands that modesty is a virtue needed by a Jedi. Vader’s love for his son redeemed him at the end of Episode Six, Return of the Jedi. By then, it was too late, for the Republic had collapsed and millions of people, as well as countless worlds, had been destroyed because of his allegiance to his evil master.

This brings us to episode seven. The Republic is partially restored but the First Order has taken over the Empire as the ultimate evil, and the “Supreme Leader” seeks to replace the Old Empire. The resistance still exists and the Remnants of Republic liberated from the Empire along with the resistance stand in its way. The Supreme Leader has his own apprentice, the son of Han Solo and Princess Leia. As for Luke Skywalker, he has disappeared after a group of Jedis he was training suffered the same fate as the Jedis suffered in episode three when Anakin Skywalker hunts them down and kills them. The First Order makes it their mission to hunt down Luke Skywalker in order to destroy him and end the Jedis for good.

The Force Awakens sees the rise not just of the Dark Side but a new Jedi rises as a new character becomes aware in the course of the movie that she has the force within her. The plot of the movie is similar to episode 4, A New Hope, as Rey, the scavenger from Planet Jakku, follows the path that Luke did in episode four and there is much to learn about her. What we know is that Luke’s light saber has an affinity for her and she does have the power of the force, but where did this power come from? Her ability to control the force comes quicker than what Luke experience in episode four through six.

As for the politics, we hear the same arguments as we see present in the first six episodes: Order takes precedence over liberty and freedom as General Hux unleashes the new Death Star on the fledgling Republican after giving a speech on the need for order. When Han Solo, Chewbacca, Rey, Finn and the robot BB-8, meet with cantina owner Maz Kanata on the Planet Takodana, she reminds Solo and others that evil and the dark side has existed for thousands of years and the First Order is mere extension of the evil she has seen before.

The Skywalker story continues through Kylo Ren, the son of Solo and Leia, and who knows if Rey is also part of the Skywalker line as well. Episode Seven ends with Rey meeting with Luke Skywalker, and we can assume that the Jedi’s line begins again as the force awakens. There is no reason for conservatives not to adopt the story as their own as history has shown that evil exists and that freedom and liberty are fragile; one generation from being expunged.