First, I am delightedly flattered by your first paragraph. Seriously.
"Evil" probably overstates the case here; "shoddy" seems closer to the mark to me.
I wouldn't go so far as "shoddy", at least not in terms of the writing. As I think I said, though there is a pulpish feel to her prose, her description of the decline, and of Dagny fighting the long defeat against it, were compelling.
But insofar as her worldview — at least as she posits it here — necessitates the deaths of billions as part of her "happy ending", I stand by my use of "evil". Also, I suspect I was influenced by her own free use of the term and concept to describe the book's villains.
In the real world, that willingness to abstract the lives of actual human beings in favour of "the greater good" is what leads idealists of all stripes to countenance gulags and war-zones, mass starvation and mass slaughter as nothing but "collateral damage".
On The (Relatively) Judicious Use of the Word "Evil"
"Evil" probably overstates the case here; "shoddy" seems closer to the mark to me.
I wouldn't go so far as "shoddy", at least not in terms of the writing. As I think I said, though there is a pulpish feel to her prose, her description of the decline, and of Dagny fighting the long defeat against it, were compelling.
But insofar as her worldview — at least as she posits it here — necessitates the deaths of billions as part of her "happy ending", I stand by my use of "evil". Also, I suspect I was influenced by her own free use of the term and concept to describe the book's villains.
In the real world, that willingness to abstract the lives of actual human beings in favour of "the greater good" is what leads idealists of all stripes to countenance gulags and war-zones, mass starvation and mass slaughter as nothing but "collateral damage".