Cass Sunstein: belief

Transcript context

…Yes. That’s in your interpretation of the movies. I don’t see it that way. And I think George Lucas kind of got a little bit at why I don’t see it that way. He said in one interview, long after the original trilogy — I think long after the prequels, too — he said, “Every one of us has a choice of being a hero every single day of our lives. We can treat somebody with dignity and kindness or not. We can be a decent person on that day or not.” And I think that kind of somewhat innocent and earnest thinking — that you are at a crossroads, you can go one way rather than the other — is basically the authorial voice behind Star Wars. So, it may be that you’re turned off. And I don’t love the Ewoks so much, and the — you know, the way they — a little too cutesy. I agree with that. But the idea that Luke — ok, so, I think this is one of the most powerful lines in, let’s say, popular culture in American history. “I am a Jedi, like my father before me.” That’s extraordinary. And what’s extraordinary about that is the statement is, “My father, the worst person in the universe, is a Jedi.” And that is claiming the goodness and non-Sithness of the father. Ultimately, Luke makes it true, that the Jediness of Vader is redeemed in the end. And that’s where I think the movies in the end come down. But they do go to the dark side, so that’s why I think what you say has plausibility. They don’t, in the end, honor it. Have Episodes I through III made you more libertarian?…

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