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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5011702" data-attributes="member: 4937">What, you've never been in a thread I was involved in before? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />It's what King Arthur does.  It's also what Beowulf's father Scyld wins approval from the bard for doing when he says, "That was a good king."I think that part of the problem is that we currently live in a culture which upholds Chaotic principles of liberty and free-will as being inherently good (and I'm not here to argue that they are or not), and so we shun the notion that good ever involves any amount of compulsion.  We say things like, "You can't legislate morality." (a very chaotic thing to say), and while that aphorism might contain a bit of truth, when we say it we don't usually mean it in the subtle and nuanced way that I think the person who first came up with that thought meant it, but instead use it in a thoughtless manner as if it was a completely obvious thing to say (and it isn't).   We live in a society that has had prosperity, security, and the rule of law for so long that I think we have come to assume that authortarian threats are the only thing we have to worry about.  And I'm not going to minimize that threat, but I think it worth considering that in a society without prosperty, security, or the rule of law the 'good' thing to do (or at least the 'Good' thing to do) might be to bring about those things even over and perhaps especially over the objections of your neighboring warlords.   Certainly in a choatic of a period as the Dark Ages, the idea of a strong King uniting the waring factions and forging a peace by the sword if need be had alot of appeal.That's a very modern trope though, and so is the idea of 'Evil is cool'.</blockquote>

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