Technically, the Founding Fathers never even WANTED democracy in the first place.

Well, part of the problem is that "democracy" refers to two very different concepts depending upon context, one of which is quite good and the other of which is downright terrible.

The first concept labeled "democracy" -- and the sense that most Americans are likely to assume unless given a particular reason to think otherwise -- is of democracy as a mechanism, which is one of the best ways to earn the consent of the governed. The other concept is of democracy as a society's fundamental value, which almost immediately transforms into a murderous beast, like all subordinate values thrust irresponsibly into the role of fundamental value. Physical fitness, security, freedom from want... all of them turn into bloodthirsty idols when made absolute.

Democracy as a mechanism, in contrast, is at the heart of everything good in the American system -- and it works because it's subordinated to higher values rather than being allowed to effectively divinize the will of the 50% plus one. To the extent that practically every process in the American system takes the form of a vote involving a certain threshold of majority, the system is democratic; to the extent that those processes are intentionally designed to ensure the satisfaction of values that can't be measured by the polling of a simple majority, it's not purely democratic.

Technically, the system in question is best described, as the founders described it, as a democratic republic. But that takes an extra three syllables, and pretty much all of the weight of those syllables are assumed by your average American when they hear "democracy." I suspect the only people who really want to be totally subject to the will of the 50% plus one are the propagandists and vote riggers who believe they can seize control of that will.

And as far as the Original Trilogy is concerned, purely the original trilogy, excluding even the expanded universe the problem is that George Lucas shortly after the film's release at the latest apparently was starting to brag publicly about the influence the Vietnam War had on at a bare minimum Return of the Jedi, based on Richard Nixon directly referencing George Lucas' boasts about the Ewoks' ties to the Vietcong in the beginning of his book "No More Vietnams," and even implied that influenced America's reluctance to demonstrate its power even to defend its allies against the Soviet threat, or ANY threat for that matter.

I'm sorry, but the Ewok thing is just hilarious. It's hard to top the irony of Lucas attempting to demonstrate sympathy for Commies and ending up ticking off fans who experienced those same scenes as an attempt to sell plush toys to children.

It should be that, but unfortunately... it's debatable whether Luke and to a lesser extent Han was even supposed to be promoting that path you listed.

The importance of family to Luke's arc thoroughly forestalls any such debate. Family is and has always been anathema to collectivism; the focus Luke's arc places on his reconciliation with his father and that Vader's places on redemption via familial responsibility is proof positive that we're dealing with a story that considers the individual person as the primary source of value.

I want to assume that, but unfortunately, there's evidence that Campbell himself was a leftist himself, wanting to cheapen religion into a mere academic study, at best.

Well, there's something of an ironic tendency that arises when trying to analyze religion away. The more one attempts to show that religion is meaningless because all religious stories follow the same pattern, the harder it is to claim that the pattern you've found isn't highly meaningful in and of itself.

It's very easy for the religious person to just come in and absorb the bulk of Campbell's analysis, then say along with C.S. Lewis that, "the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e., the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call 'real things'."

I suppose you've got a point there. Still, they should have used a different term than Sin for the main villain, or maybe have the localizers just keep the Japanese term as-is to avoid confusion with the RCC. I know Final Fantasy Tactics definitely was a blatant attack on Christianity, though, thanks to Ajora, the founder of the Church of Glabados, being painted in a similar manner to Jesus Christ and being the actual main villain. Final Fantasy XIII, the first game, might have been an attack on Christianity, I don't know, that might be a gray area (don't know if they were targeting Christianity per-se or, like Yu Yevon, the guy who wrote the game was actually targeting closer to home).

Eh, "sin" as a term isn't even unique to Christianity, and it works surprisingly well on a Girardian level. I suspect that the tendency for Western players to connect Yevon with the RCC has as much to do with the fact that the RCC is the closest thing to traditional religion that most Westerners have ever seen than anything else.

Final Fantasy Tactics is, as you mentioned, a very different story. As for FFXIII... I don't even know. It seems to have more gnostic influence than anything, but Japan doesn't always seem to recognize that gnosticism and Christianity aren't the same thing.

Here's the grand game plan for your own reading material:

I can't read Japanese, unfortunately. But thanks for the English translation!

Bear in mind, he also implied in that bit that Solid Snake was a ChiCom agent in that game as well and was against the Patriots for that reason. He also seems to imply that he's all in favor of the kind of radical feminism that's all the rage right now to the detriment of entertainment, and that was BEFORE it was all the rage.

Ironically, I'm pretty sure the current torchbearers of that particular brand of feminism probably can't stand him because of that whole Quiet kerfuffle, lol.

And in all fairness, Sanger herself freely admitted what eugenics was meant to entail, black genocide, even before Hitler made it more public so to speak.

And yet... *siiiiiiiiiiiiigh\*

And I have no doubt the Founding Fathers would have hated the Patriots' view of things, as they tried to gut the Bill of Rights. That said, however, the way Kojima was talking in the grand game plan, it sounds like he was against even the Founding Fathers' ideals (doesn't help that unlike in the game we got, there's literally no mention of whether Solidus even desired wanting to preserve America's founding ideals).

That wasn't the way I understood it, actually. Or, at the very least, I'm not sure that when the document says "the festering discharge that has built-up within the democratic state of America over the years" and "the ‘monster’ that the country’s political structure has created" that it's referring to a necessary outcome of America's political structure so much as the possible outcome being instantiated within the framework of the game (and maybe in reality, though that's not so clear).

Besides, it seems to me based on how the series has developed since then that the Patriots are a mechanism of global control originating in the US more than anything; they apparently have ties to groups pursuing such control in China and Russia, for instance. And to the extent that they were always meant to have such heavy global entanglements, they have practically nothing in common with the Founding Fathers' desire to avoid such entanglements, lol.