In this blog entry, Ryan Kaufman asks these insightful questions:

Was this outcome inevitable? Did the Jedi begin to pull away from their basic belief in defense and knowledge, when they embarked on a path of war? Were they complicit in their own fall-- turning ever so slightly from the Light Side, step by step?

To which, in part, I had responded:

I think in the end, of all the things the Jedi had become complacent about, the most important one was the idea that they were to serve the Republic only as commanded, not as their conscience dictated.

Ryan then asked me to elaborate on this thought, and I found I hadn't the room, nor did I want to bleed away his response space..so I brought it here to link to there.

In that statement, I was referring to their departure from the tenets of peace through protection of the Republic, and of democracy - they had a moral obligation to maintain a defensive posture, not just from those threats from without, but threats from within as well. They had traditionally sought peace via diplomacy and dialogue, not the "agressive negotiations" Anakin seemed to embrace. When they were asked then to lay down their ideals and pick up their weapons instead, though reluctant and befuddled, they never seemed to openly, and as one voice, ask "Why?"

Oddly it was those breakaways who more openly questioned the state of the Republic by deciding to fight it - namely one Count Dooku. Though misguided by his own moral compass, he at least took action against the establishment of the day. He had decided that just because it was incumbent, doesn't make it right. The Jedi, faced with the same choices, decided only on their small part in those affairs, but never rose above the conflict to assert the ideals that had effectively protected the peace for millennia.

They accepted their subserviant role instead of asserting their moral leadership. Moral leadership is not something assigned to you in a constitution or a military code. Moral leadership resides in the hearts and minds of those you lead and serve. It exists independantly of those powers granted by the state - it is something akin to those "unalienable rights" of the Jeffersonian school of thought.

The Jedi had evolved into something higher than martial bastions - they were moral leaders and role models. They were the embodiment of the high ideals of the Republic. If any democracy was so sacred that it had its own priesthood, it was the Jedi that heard this holy calling.

What we fight to gain through blood, we strive to keep in peace. Sometimes one has to pick up arms to defend those things, but at that moment, its crucial to decide who you're fighting for. It's apropos it was Yoda who later admonished Luke thusly: "Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh! Excitement. Heh! A Jedi craves not these things." A statement in a vacuum of wisdom? I think not. I think Yoda is referring directly back to exactly the dilemmas facing the Jedi at the time of their demise. It was of extreme importance that the Jedi realize where they were. What they were doing. It was their blindness to the real threat that led them down the path of becoming generals instead of alarmists.

These are things embedded in our own national conscience and I think there is no coincidence the George brings them to light again. They are at our formation, and rightfully at the formation of every democracy - the first initial choice of right and wrong, led by moral judgement, not legal. Our most sacred icon of democracy starts out with these words:

WHEN, in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands... among the Powers of the Earth...to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's GOD entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the Causes which impel them...

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their CREATOR, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.

It is in that vein of thought that we realize that it's the morality of choice, not the legality of choice, that defines Democracy. As Jedi, they were the very clerics of such an ancient undertaking, and the defenders of the faith, if you will. This being in a democracy not 200 some odd years old. More like 10's of thousands of years old. That they would have accepted their role as merely pawns and not as the integral moral fiber of the Republic is tragic on epic scales.

They had become so used to a role serving the Republic's needs, they had forgotten their role as leaders of the Republic's hearts. They had lost their belief, and therefore, their purpose.

"That is why you fail," Yoda would later say to the only remaining Padawan.