Quote Originally Posted by DaedalusMkV View Post
To be fair, the basic Sith philosophy isn't necessarily evil - the idea that passion is something to be channeled rather than denied, the acknowledgement that struggle is an inherent part of the nature of life and the assertion that strength is necessary to achieve freedom are all perfectly reasonable ideas. If the Sith were consistent and coherent in their philosophy they would be encouraging strength in others, encouraging spirited but fair competition in every aspect of life and acknowledging the right of others to claim freedoms. If you judge the factions solely by their codes, the Jedi come off as foolishly naive to the point of denying reality while the Sith wind up looking like pragmatic realists. A sort of anarcho-capitalist dreamworld would fit perfectly with the Sith creed and the teachings they feed to their new recruits.

The problem is that they don't actually do this. In The Old Republic it's actually possible to play a Sith this way (Light Side Sith Warrior is a very interesting experience, full of very confused enemies wondering why they're still alive after you leave the room), and a couple of the Sith characters do kind of espouse this philosophy, but by and large the Sith are all somewhere between ruthless self-interested sociopaths and tyrannical fascists (or both), using the Sith Code as a justification for being horrible people. I actually agree that you could play a very fun Sith in an RPG, but in general they certainly aren't great neighbors or the kind of people I'd want running an institution I belong to.

Of course, there's certainly something to be said that a non-corrupt Sith society might have some virtues. That just doesn't seem to actually happen in the canon.
I’m not so sure about this. Boiled down to the core philosophies, Sith are really about selfishness while the Jedi are really about selflessness. The former promotes using the Force for personal gain only whereas the latter explicitly forbids it. Now you might not have a problem with being selfish occasionally and that’s totally understandable but if it was only occasionally we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The whole point of the dark side of the Force is that it is insidious and corrupting, the more you use it the more intoxicated you become in its use. There is no using the dark side safely (unless your name is Anakin Skywalker but look what happened to him) and very few Jedi or former Jedi ever showed the ability to use the dark side without it overwhelming them and once you start using the dark side it’s almost impossible to stop. It’s a wonder Dooku was ever able to use the dark side without succumbing to it and it took Asajj Ventress a lot of time and effort to let go of it.

If the Sith didn’t use the dark side and actually just used the light side differently to the Jedi, maybe there would be ground upon which the Sith could prove they’re not inherently evil. The problem is, however, when you talk about the Sith achieving freedom they only ever do so for themselves. The Sith concept of freedom is “I can do what I want without any limitations or repercussions” and understandably that causes a lot of problems if there are too many Sith. That’s why the Tule of Two was implemented, after all, because of all the in-fighting. If the Sith had been as benevolent as you suggest they can be, they’d have never lost to the Jedi.