Tautological Templar: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

Considering all the [[Kick the Dog|puppy-kicking]] the [[Knight Templar]] gets into, sooner or later another good character is going to get the courage to ask her something. Considering how [[Evil Is Petty|petty and mean]] she acts, often toward people who have only committed minor crimes, how can she really be a "good" character?

This character may look like a [[Hypocrite]] (She probably is, but she's too stupid, self-righteous, deluded, or willfully ignorant to understand it) but in reality she's far more dangerous than that. Because she can't comprehend the concept of [[Moral Dissonance]], she will throw herself into any struggle with the same force, conviction, and resolve that [[The Hero]] shows against the [[Big Bad]]. That's because in her worldview, every enemy she has is twirling a handlebar moustache, madly cackling while tying orphans to the railroad tracks -- [[You Rebel Scum|even if said enemy turns out to be]] [[The Hero]] himself.

In general, if you feel inclined to put on a page [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]]: ''thinks'' he is this, then you are probably dealing with this trope.

If a character comes across this way despite the author's intentions, you might have a case of [[Protagonist-Centered Morality]].

* [[Depending on the Writer]], [[Judge Dredd]] is aware that sometimes strict adherence to the letter of the law results in injustice; whether he accepts it as [[I Did What I Had to Do]] or exercises [[Loophole Abuse]] varies. There have been other Judges every so often who actually believed, "Because I'm a Judge, everything I do is right/legal."

* In ''[[Spider-Man]]'' Venom believes that he's the good guy and anything he does to Spider-man is justified because he "ruined his life." The fact that Spider-man [[Unknown Rival|hadn't even met the man before he got his powers]] does nothing to dissuade this view.

* [[Norman Osborn]] fell into this territory in ''[[Dark Reign (comics)|Dark Reign]]'', insisting that all of his actions were for the greater good and the heroes shouldn't be uniting against him and have no idea how much he has been doing to protect everyone. The fact that he started it by trying to kill all the heroes in the first place, that he tried to [[Offing the Offspring|murder his own son for ratings]], thats he's been [[Police State|killing or locking up everyone who has a bad thing to say about him]], that his own superhero teams [[Evil Counterpart|comprised of supervillains]] he was allowing (and often ordering) to commit all sorts of murders and atrocities, and that the crisis in question he was referring to ([[The Sentry]] turning back into [[Super-Powered Evil Side|The Void]]) was all his fault in the first place, or the fact that his ''own'' [[Super-Powered Evil Side]] was slowly taking over and he was starting to lose his mind and covering up the fact...Yeah, none of that really mattered.

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* The Pope from ''[[Tales of Symphonia]]'' believes that all half elves deserve to be executed or be slaves because he's The Pope, he never gives any further explanation than he's the Pope, he doesn't even care that The Chosen, a centerpoint of the religion, disagrees, because HE'S RIGHT. Essentially he bases his racism entirely on being The Pope. {{spoiler|Hell, his DAUGHTER is a half elf and that didn't stop him from putting her in a chamber because that's just how things are!}}

** {{spoiler|His daughter}} IS the reason he hates half-elves. He started out on the half-elves side until {{spoiler|his daughter was born}}, and after {{spoiler|she grew up, then stopped aging}} he "realized" how different half-elves really were from humans, and it terrified him. [[Fantastic Racism|Xenophobia]] at it's worst.

== Western Animation ==

* Stan Smith from ''[[American Dad]]!'' is always confident that his way (which is often shockingly bigoted, even by his own family's standards) is the good, righteous and just way, by simple virtue of being ''his'' way. He often comes around by the end of an episode, but the show actually lampshades how [[Aesop Amnesia|the lesson never sticks]]. As a gung-ho CIA agent, he also feels this way about [[Eagle Land|the United States]] itself - he doesn't believe that America can do no wrong so much as he believes that anything it does is justified by being America.

* In one ''[[South Park]]'' two-parter, [[The Sociopath|Eric]] [[Fat Bastard|Cartman]], in the guise of his "superhero" [[Secret Identity]] The Coon, manipulated Cthulu (yes, [[H.P. Lovecraft|that Cthulu]]) into working for him and used it to kill and destroy everyone and everything he didn't like (and then got mad when Cthulu was getting all the media credit), justifying it by saying that he was making the world a better place. When Kenny, {{spoiler|as the superhero Mysterion}}, confronts him and angrily tells him that he's only making a better world for himself, Cartman simply and in all honesty just says "[[Evil Cannot Comprehend Good|Yes, thats what heroes do]]", and didn't really get Kenny's point. He seriously thought Kenny and the other boys were only trying to stop him out of jealously.

** That script ''specifically'' is more a self-assumed (by the president) case of [[To Be Lawful or Good]], since ''illegal'' doesn't necessarily mean ''evil''.

** Signing Statements are a key mechanic that allows this. Bills passed by Congress must be signed into law by the President (or have his/her veto overridden), and it's common to add a statement describing what the President considers the law to mean and how it will be implemented. Congress often passes extremely vague laws, so clarification from the executive is useful... but recent Presidents have begun to take rather ''unusual'' views of what laws mean and how they should be implemented. Like that laws don't affect members of the Executive Branch when they don't want them to. Nowadays this happens depressingly often.

* [[My Country, Right or Wrong]] sometimes leads to this: acts by 'our' country and/or its friends are condoned, even encouraged, when the exact same actions done by 'them' or their allies get roundly condemned. [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement|Let's not get too specific about examples]].