Leave it to Arthur to come up with profound thoughts on the Sith

It's true that the price of liberty is the eternal vigilance, but for the left the price of the eternal vigilance, in turn, has been the eternal paranoia, and the eternal tendency to see its own government as a greater threat to America and the world than any of the actual, existing, reality-based totalitarian tyrants that have ever roamed the earth. One can have reasonable discussion about the growth in size and reach of the government over the past two centuries, but the left's role in this debate has always been a boy who cried empire. Thus (to is critics) the United States seems to be perpetually on the verge of tumbling into tyranny (the Civil War, the Gilded Age corporatization, World War One, News Deal, World War Two, Vietnam, the war on terror, or generally whenever the Republicans are in the White House), but somehow it never does (except to some of these critics, for whom it already had).

Lucas might feel he's quite cool to have dreamed up the concept of "Star Wars" around the time of the Vietnam War as a cutting-edge commentary on the political trajectory of the United States; he might feel he's even cooler to have dreamed out a concept that still resonates (at least with him and the left) decades later. To everyone else, the never-ending carping about the slide into tyranny might sound dated, silly and self-absorbed, while the world outside of Hollywood witnesses the procession of real-life Evil Empires and their minor clones.

The Sith - the verdict