Lot’s of email on this , d’uh. Some readers may be interested in Joss Whedon’s take on the politics of Serenity/Firefly:

Q. “Firefly” and “Serenity”’s political and cultural underpinnings are unusually well thought-out. You’ve obviously developed a whole system of planets, a Sino-American political system, a mix of languages. How long did the concept fester in your head before you started writing?
A. It festered for a while. It was probably two or three years after I came up with the idea that I made the TV show, a year-and-a-half doing that, and then a couple of years to write the movie. So it’s had time to bake.
And people are always like, “They’re fighting an evil empire!” And I’m like, “Well, it’s not really an evil empire.” The trick was always to create something that was complex enough that you could bring some debate to it — that it wasn’t black-and-white. It wasn’t, “If we hit this porthole in the Death Star, everything will be fine!” It was messier than that, and the messiest thing is that the government is basically benign. It’s the most advanced culturally….
Q. And [the government-sponsored assassin] The Operative has an honorable point of view — in his way.
A. Oh, he totally does. Mal is somebody that I knew, as I created him, I would not get along with. I don’t think we have the same politics. But that’s sort of the point. I mean, if the movie’s about anything, it’s about the right to be wrong. It’s about the messiness of people. And if you try to eradicate that, you eradicate them.