Aurors/Unforgiveable Curses (was "Aiming Wand at Bellatrix...")

[Matt]

No: HPFGUIDX 79656

--- evangelina wrote:

> But, I don't feel comfortable thinking of 
> Aurors as people who enjoy causing pain... 

and went on for that reason to reject the
view that use of the unforgiveable curses
requires a degree of sadism.  

My response:

But one of the oft-repeated lessons of the 
series is that access to a position of
authority is no guarantee of a person's
character.  I would hope that the MoM tries
hard to recruit Aurors who are good people
and who will not abuse their positions of
authority, much as with our RW police forces.
Yet we know that, particularly in times of
struggle, authority does get abused (and
sometimes such abuses are even sanctioned).
There is police brutality in the RW, and
there doubtless were Aurors who carried 
things too far in the WW under Crouch.

To me, JKR's account of the Aurors being
authorized to torture and dominate suspects
(or witnesses), in order to better fight
crime, works powerfully as an allegory for
many more or less analogous RW situations.
It brings to bear, too, much of the moral 
complexity of those situations: although
JKR is pretty clearly espousing a value 
judgment that would reject such tactics, 
her older readers cannot help but be aware 
that the moral posture is more complicated
than Harry realizes.

-- Matt