Slytherin Ideology, in context

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 100295

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Eric Oppen" 
<technomad at i...> wrote:).  Seeing us unable to do things they 
can do without effort, and not having had the benefit of
 our sort of education, they naturally feel superior and rather 
contemptuou> of us---even Arthur Weasley, who is about as 
pro-Muggle as a lifelong resident of the WW can be, tends to 
think of us as rather inferior.<<

Seeing those who don't share our background, beliefs, values, 
abilities, etc. as inferior, and being slightly contemptuous of 
them is a *human* trait, not a Slytherin one. In fact, I think we can 
expand that, in Rowling's world, to a Being trait. It becomes  
chauvinism when a group  begins to think their  superiority gives 
them rights that others don't, or shouldn't, have. That is what 
Slytherin came to believe. But did all his students agree with 
him?

The important thing about Slytherin's departure is that he didn't 
take his House with him. In contrast to Slytherin himself, those 
he hand-picked weren't unwilling to be educated with the 
Muggle-born and the halfblooded. Even in those days, there 
were Slytherins who weren't as radical as Slytherin became. 
There would have been no need to build the Chamber and 
conceal the basilisk within it if Salazar had been able to get all 
the Slytherins of his day on his side.

I think sometimes the fans are guilty of being more House-ist 
than the Hat. The Hat's job, it tells us in OOP, is to quarter the 
students. That means divide them into four *equal* parts. Since 
the purebloods are dying out, there are probably a minority, even 
in Slytherin, whose blood is pure by Malfoy standards. Especially 
since some of those who would qualify are sorted into other 
Houses.

Slytherin was always flexible about rules--I have this sneaking 
suspicion that Myrtle, cunning and devious, was a Slytherin 
despite her Muggle birth. Wouldn't Draco be shocked!

Pippin