Jim Syler’s Reviews > The Passion of Ayn Rand > Status Update

Yeah, and there's a reason for that. If you're going to stand up and give a "fuck you" to the world, if you're going to stake your stature and your reputation on someone else's words, someone else's vision, which goes against every moral intuition of almost everyone, it had better be entirely right. It had better be completely defensible in every detail. If I'm going to hook my wagon to a new philosophy, one which indicts nearly every aspect of our society and most people's worldview and behavior, it had better damn well be unimpeachable, or else I'll be answering solely for its flaws, forever. And Atlas Shrugged is not. It's close—astonishingly, wondrously close—and as inspirational, thought-provoking fiction it's wonderful. But the ideas are not quite those one would wish to chuck everything and go to the barricades for. It's hard to pinpoint exactly why not—I'd have to do a detailed study—but even I, who have always been very largely in sympathy with Rand's vision and goals, have had great difficulty being willing to stand up and full-throatedly endorse her. It might be different if she didn't make it perfectly clear that there's no wiggle room whatsoever; that you either swallow her philosophy in toto, without reservation or exception—or you're evil. I simply can't go there, and I cannot condemn as fundamentally evil and "death-worshippers" 99% of the populace. And Rand herself makes clear that to stand up and defend her is to do just that.