Arranged marriages

If you watch enough chick flicks (especially movies aimed at younger girls) it will not take long before you run into a story with an arranged marriage in it somewhere. The parents who want their daughter to marry for money versus the girl who wants to marry for love. I always sympathize with the parents. They always portray the parents as being clueless about the man they have chosen or evilly plotting their child's destruction for their own gain. Based on this I hear girls comment on how horrid that situation would be and how glad they are that society doesn't work like that anymore.
I don't know. I think I would trust my parents to pick a man who was far above tolerable.
That was something that bugged me to no end about Mulan 2; (Yes I am publicly admitting to having watched that movie. Little sisters are my excuse.) The Emperor, whom we all admired in the first movie, was stupid enough to set up his own daughters in a marriage with a kid he had never met. I expected better of him. He would have been wise enough to base his daughters match on more than just politics. He would have made sure that the boy was suitable, not just that the marriage was good for the country. Portraying arranged marriages as evil is a categorical imperative in our culture even at the expense of otherwise admirable characters.
I don't think it's any more inherently evil than our current system. You can't argue that there was little love in marriages that were arranged based on the love that exists in the average American relationship today. There are as many unfaithful spouses now as then, if not more. There were certainly fewer divorces. Divorce seems have become commonly acceptable and necessary when the young people started choosing partners for themselves rather than there parents. It seems like it ought to be the other way around. If your parents choose your husband no one will blame you if it doesn't work out and a divorce might be a very reasonable option. Yet it didn't happen nearly as often, as far as I know. Now that young people choose for themselves they often find that they chose wrong and have to try again. As CS Lewis observed, it must have worked since we are all here and many of our ancestors had arranged marriages for hundreds of years.
I told my dad that if he wants to arrange my marriage he is welcomed. Saves me the trouble of having to get rid of guys I don't find suitable. Just send anyone interested to Dad and let him weed out the losers. He didn't seem to enthusiastic about the idea. He thinks I've a pretty good chance of ending up in a convent so finding me a man would be rather useless anyway.