[HPforGrownups] Sympathy for Voldemort?

[Patricia Bullington-McGuire]

No: HPFGUIDX 59055

On Thu, 29 May 2003 CareALotsClouds at aol.com wrote:

> To murder Voldemort, or to 
> arrest Voldemort would be discrimination since he is psychotic, would  a sane 
> person kill hundreds of people?  Aren't killers there days that kill and kill 
> known to be insane?  Whats so different about Voldemort?  

Actually, serial killers are frequently imprisoned or put to death here in
the US.  The standards for legal insanity vary from state to state, but in
no state does the mere fact that someone committed murder, even
repeatedly, mean that that person is necessarily insane and thus exempt
from incarceration or execution.

That said, let me address CareALotsClouds' point as a whole.  I do feel a
bit sorry for Tom Riddle because of his lousy childhood.  It can't have
been easy, and I feel his pain.  However, I don't think his rotten
childhood rendered him psychotic in any clinical sense.  There *are* other
reasons to kill besides pathological mental instability -- revenge or
personal gain, for instance.

Riddle/Voldemort seems to me to be more like Stalin or Milosevic or any
number of other power-hungry political and military leaders who have used
murder and disappearances to solidify their hold over the societies they
wish to control.  CareALotsClouds, do you really think that every such
dictator is insane and not responsible for their actions?  Like other
dictators (or would-be dictators), Voldemort kills because it serves his
interests to do so, simple as that.  I don't think he is insane, and
therefore I don't think it is inappropriate to punish him for his crimes.

----
Patricia Bullington-McGuire	<patricia at obscure.org>

The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered
three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the
purely hypothetical.  They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each
nonexisted in an entirely different way ... 
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"