Nobody need get past frame two, to see what the cartoonist's view of Rand is: "sociopathic nut bag" - which, as has been stated before, is useless as an argument against Objectivism, and pretty intellectually lazy on his part. That, and later ad hom's against Libertarians, are the main "argument" in this cartoon.
However, I think a few of his observations are unwittingly entirely accurate:
* There is a segment of American conservatism that loves to use Atlas Shrugged as a rationalization for corporatism (which he implied through the "espoused greed and selfishness were great moral virtues" comment). They're wrong, of course, but they do.Why Atlas Shrugged, and not some other novel? What is it about that novel that draws "second-handers" (as Rand might have called them) like Newt Gingrich?
* There is another segment of American conservatism that loves to use the Bible as a rationalization for corporatism. A handful will happily mingle rationalizations from both the misused Rand and the misused Bible, to justify some pretty reprehensible behaviors. However, most modern conservative Christians would be too frightened by Rand's atheism to do that.
Just to clarify, when I say "corporatism", I am refering to the variety of "capitalism" that the Newt Gingriches of the world espouse: using government to reward friends and punish enemies in the corporate world. A "capitalism" in which artificial trade barriers are set up and defended with guns, in order to enrich onself.
Where the cartoonist suffers a massive FAIL, I think, is in equivocating the rationalizations incorrectly gleened from Rand's work, for Rand's work itself. Atlas Shrugged is debatably an iron-clad argument against the whole concept of state as a just means of organizing society. Yet, "Randians" like Gingrich and Greenspan and even Peikoff will tell you that's not true. Why is that? The same, in a converse sense, could be said for the Bible. We here all know it's a massive brick of hysterical, self-contradictory, violent nonsense. But Christians will be happy to tell you all about how coherent and loving it "really" is (as this cartoonist did). Why is that?
And, you can tell this cartoonist is a clearly a Christian:
* He thinks altruism is in the same category as compassion.
* He thinks submitting to torture and murder is a "nice" thing to do.
* He refers to "Pure" Libertarians, attempting to project the label of "puritan" as well as the stigma of fundamentalism, on to Objectivists.
* The last frame does not have a distraught Objectivist shocked at the missing pages in Atlas Shrugged, but a distraught Christian shocked at the missing pages in the Bible.