STAR WARS RETURNS today with its fifth installment, “Attack of the Clones.” There will be talk of the Force and the Dark Side and the epic morality of George Lucas's series. But the truth is that from the beginning, Lucas confused the good guys with the bad. The deep lesson of Star Wars is that the Empire is good.
It's a difficult leap to make—embracing Darth Vader and the Emperor over the plucky and attractive Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia—but a careful examination of the facts, sorted apart from Lucas's off-the-shelf moral cues, makes a quite convincing case.
Via my dog wants to be on the radio, [1] The Case for The Empire [2]
Given this article, and some scenes from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace [3] (one where two Jedi Knights take custody of a small child and leave his enslaved mother because “that's not our job” and another one where said two Jedi Knights gang up on one Sith Lord) that yes, a convincing case could be made that the Empire was an attempt to keep the Republic together.
[1] http://gweezlebur.com/~ivey/weblog/archive/archive-20020517.shtml
[2] http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/248ipzbt.asp