What's So Bad About The Galactic Empire?

Have you ever really stopped to consider why the Galactic Empire in Star Wars is actually bad?

Welcome to Out of Frame, a new on-going monthly series where we talk about the intersection of art, culture, and ideas from a classical liberal perspective. The goal for this series is to explore the underlying ideas in movies, TV, comics, books, and other media that you may not have thought about before.

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Video
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Star Wars Episodes I-VII
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Star Wars: Rebels S01E01 & S01E07
Star Wars: Clone Wars
Prelinger Archives
Wikimedia Commons

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Music
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John Williams: Star Wars Main Theme
Chill Study: Brooklyn Drive

Written, Produced, and Edited by Sean W. Malone
Assistant Editor, Pavel Rusakov

[emperorconstantine.]

Finn was from the First Order, a different timeline.

They kidnapped children because they were desperate for troops.


The Empire never had to because they had so many volunteers and would clone the top ten graduates from each class of troopers.

[lordhierophant]

You can't use the force awakens in this video because that's not the Empire, that's the first order. two separate entities.

[SYLOStarWars]

The Empire and the First Order are not the same thing, though.

[zachcarpenter]

4:49-4:52 "taking their property by force"
*Shows Darth Vader using the Force to swipe Han's blaster*
I laughed so damn hard.

[DickbuttDirk]

Nothing is bad about the Empire. Please do not ask anymore questions fellow citizen.

[adagatiyascullawl]

You treated the first order and empire as the same thing, but they are actually quite different

[somedandy]

"What did Emperor Palpatine use his power for? What does the Empire stand for?"
That's what the sequel series should have answered: Palpatine building the Death Star to thwart a greater foe - something that even the Sith feared.

[zoron]

The first order isn't the empire. Its just a bunch of remnants from the military that reformed into their own version.

[JinzoTK]

I would like to point out The First Order and The Galactic Empire are not the same thing. So you can't use Force Awakens.

[ChrisParrishOutdoors]

Finn was a conscript of the First Order. The Empire had a voluntary military or at least a voluntary Navy. Luke was considering applying to the Imperial Academy and joining the Imperial Navy in a New Hope.

[specialagent]

FTR: a popular conspiracy theory is that Palatine received a vision of an invasion by an extra-galactic threat, the Yungzen-Vong and had focused on militarizing the galaxy in order to combat the threat. Given they have organic ships the size of small planets, the theory was the Death Star was meant to be a tool to kill their ships in large numbers to drive off the invasion.

[MediaZealot]

There are a load of canon materials which show the tyranny of the empire, including genocide, ecological disasters, bioweapons etc. Not to mention Alderaan was a planet of 'normal' empire citizens, all of which were killed for crimes committed by a handful of people. I actually have a video coming up where I take a slightly different spin; that the empire's manner of rule assures rebellion and its own eventual destruction. I like the angle of this video though, it's an avenue worth exploring :)

[MarioFanaticXV]

The EU went into so much more detail on the sorts of questions you're asking. While little if any of this effects Disney's canon, here's a few things of note:

1) The empire brought slavery back to the galaxy at large. It was outlawed for thousnads of years in the Old Republic- mind you, there were places in the galaxy with slavery, but the republic (and the empire) never controlled the entire galaxy- they were just the largest government of their time period. In particular, large numbers of wookiees were enslaved to work on the first Death Star due to the fact they were far stronger than most other intelligent species in the galaxy.

2) Weapon bans. While citizens were not entirely banned from owning weapons, military grade weapons were illegal for the average citizen to own. In particular, Han's DL-44 was illegal specifically because it was capable of penetrating storm troooper armor.

3) Targeting civilians. The Death Star in and of itself wouldn't be something that's evil. It's the Star Wars equivalent of nuclear weapons: While it certainly was abused, if they had limited its use to heavily entrenched military targets, it would have been justifiable.

4) In the EU, the Rebel Alliance's formal name is "The Alliance to Restore the Republic". This makes it far more clear what their intentions are: To return to a form of representative government where each planet gets a say in the matters of law and politics.

5) The CIS (Confederacy of Independent Systems, the ones that controlled the droid armies in Episodes II and III) was not actually evil. They were pawns of Palpatine manipulated into orchestrating his rise to power- which the Old Republic was equally guilty of. Were there evil people amongst them? Certainly; but let's not forget that the Republic Navy had Tarkin, Palpatine, Thrawn, Jerec, and others that were certainly evil.

[GalacticOutlaw]

The first order enslaved people to become storm troopers. The galactic empire had no slave storm troopers. The strugle for the citizens was mostly in the outer rim, which is already hard to controll because of the crime syndicates. The lives of people in the galactic core, the midrim, and the colonial ring were much better.

[LetondAtreides]

Man... Train an idiot from childhood to be a warrior, and he not only makes a choice to run away... He can't even run or fire a gun properly.

Those instructors are just dismal.

[imperialofficer]

The last one was First Order not Empire

[governmnt]

Did he ban books and restrict speech?

YES HE DID

[einarmar]

1. the first order is not the empire
2. alien discrimination is not okay, Won't somebody think about the harch?

[EpaminondastheGreat]

About Alderaan I would really like to point out that is was Grand Moff Tarkin's to destroy the planet, not the Emperor's. It might surprise you but Palpatine had given great authority to Tarkin due to his sheer trust on him, but when he heard about Alderaan, he was furious. Not because he cared about the death of trillions, but because politically it was a stupid move. Alderaan belonged to the Core Worlds which were rich, heavily populated and influential to Galactic politics. What is worst is that the Core Worlds were loyal supporters of the Imperial regime, at least its vast majority and most of the Rebel activity existed mainly in the Outer Rim, which suffered the real consequences of the Empire's policies. What Tarkin therefore achieved, was to destroy a planet which belonged to the most loyal oversector, which was respected, prosperous, greatly populated and whose destruction only bolstered support for the Alliance which did not suffer any real damage apart from the death of Senator Organa. It is suggested that if Tarkin had not perished in the Death Star, he would have been in trouble with the Emperor, just like Vader was.

[abhishekdev]

That smuggling point was brilliant along with the non-existence of commerce as a sign of heavy taxation.