Slytherins are bad (was:Re: Severus as friend)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 183500

Hickengruendler wrote:
> 
><snip> yes, I consider the behaviour of Gryffindor and Ravenclaw
pretty flawed as well. Nonetheless, I don't recall either of them
hiding a monster inside Hogwarts to kill everyone who ist cowardly or
stupid.

Carol responds:

Probably because cowardly or stupid students posed no threat to the
school, perceived or otherwise, whereas Salazar Slytherin perceived a
threat, real or imagined, to Pure-Blood and possibly Half-Blood
students (he may have excluded Half-Bloods from his House while he
lived, but he saw no reason to deny them a Hogwarts education) from
Muggle-borns, with their family ties to Muggles, whom he perceived
(not without reason) as a threat to the very lives of Witches and Wizards.

BTW, the concept of blood superiority was thoroughly rooted in
medieval culture both before and after the eleventh century and would
have been as prevalent among Muggles as it probably was among Wizards.
I would think that Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Gryffindor were far more
enlightened with regard to "bloodism" than the rank-and-file wizards
of their time. Slytherin's attitude (setting aside the extremism of
placing a Basilisk in a hidden chamber to kill "unworthy" students)
was more typical of the time than theirs.

Ask any medieval "prince of the blood" whether he would even think of
marrying a commoner. (Well, not counting Edward IV, who married the
widow of an enemy knight some 470 years later because she wouldn't
yield her "virtue" to him otherwise.)

At any rate, the whole concept of equality despite birth and class and
property and "blood" was foreign to the times in which the Founders
lived, so why should we expect tolerance among Wizards for those of
"inferior" blood (Muggle-borns), especially when their Muggle kindred
(or some of them) were busy trying to wipe out "sorcery" and equating
it with the Black Arts and devil worship?

Carol, who really needs to work on making her sentence structure less
convoluted!