Imagine Joseph McCarthy in drag. Or J. Edgar Hoover. (Okay, that’s not as hard.) That’s what’s happening in California, as prosperous perverts “out” the opponents of gay “marriage” and try to harass them into silence.

Maybe it’s time for payback, to start publishing the names and addresses of contributors to the pro-gay side—and picketing their homes, handing out leaflets with images copied from gay leather magazines.

Better still, we could buy up houses right across the street, and make them really, really tacky. Move in next to these tasteful same sex couples, and paint the place in camouflage colors. Breed packs of mongrel dogs (no basenjis, no Jack Russell terriers—I’m thinking half coon hound, half Rottweiler). Play twangy country music, have pig roasts in the back yard, fly Confederate battle flags. Park monster trucks in the driveways, have lots of kids and teach them to shoot.

In other words, act like Americans. These screamers couldn’t stand it. The property values on their tastefully renovated Victorians would plummet, and at the very least they’d have to sell. Or they might just curl up in fetal balls and die of distaste….

Then we’d lower the Battle Flags to half mast.

Richard is right to cite Atlas Shrugged as partly a prophecy of our times—the only sort of book which such a very partial artist as Ms. Rand could have created, lacking the nuance and self-criticism to be found in anti-Utopias by multi-dimensional writers like Huxley, Orwell, or Anthony Burgess (the last of these wrote three very different anti-Utopian novels, or “cacotopias” as he called them, each of them worth reading: A Clockwork Orange, The Wanting Seed, and 1985. Each is very different, and depressingly prescient.)

To complete Richard’s picture, I’d say that the future Americans now face seems like an inartistic pastiche of Atlas Shrugged, Brave New World, The Camp of the Saints, and Howard the Duck.

This week over at InsideCatholic.com, I explore the Whig version of history, the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy, and the theory that only trouble is interesting. And I tie it all together with a link to a really smokin’ video of a chimpanzee riding a Segway. Check it out.

A good man has left us: Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. He was an eloquent writer, a serious thinker, a generous and witty commentator on the cultural scene, whose theological insights were always of interest. The magazine he founded, First Things, has always been one of the few consistently worth reading, issue to issue. His monthly, massive column “The Public Square” is a true journalistic achievement, of which any writer might be proud. Of course, I’ve differed with many of the positions taken in the magazine—not usually by Neuhaus—and I wonder what will become of it now, after his departure for happier shores. But this is not the time to argue such differences, but to join together in offering prayers for his immortal soul, and ask that he speedily receive the reward every priest, every baptized soul, pursues.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul, and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Fr. Neuhaus, you will be missed.

Update: My friend Fr. George Rutler, who attended Fr. Neuhaus on his deathbed, wrote an eloquent appreciation that should explain just why Fr. Neuhaus will be missed.

Reading Paul’s comments on the Gaza situation, I was moved to drop him a personal note, which in retrospect I think is worth sharing. I hope he doesn’t mind:

“The Israelis are living Europe’s future. Some right-wingers take glee in it, because so many Jews have a double-standard about Israeli harshness towards Moslems, and European or American self-defense of their nations against similar or comparable threats.  Part of me wants to say that I will advocate towards Israel the same standards Jewish neocons advocated toward Serbia in Kosovo. But that’s not at all fair to the people in Israel, most of whom had nothing to do with the hysterical anti-Serb campaign. I won’t use Israelis as a whipping boy for my anger at Americans like Alan Dershowitz. I don’t believe in collective guilt.”

“God help all the innocent civilians on either side. I hope I don’t live long enough to see this happening in Paris or Vienna.”

“I pray your friends and family over there are spared, and that a two-state solution can at least be tried—if only to test one way or another whether co-existence is possible. If it fails, then it’s time for harsher measures on Israel’s part, akin to our removal of the Apaches. God forbid it come to that.”

This week I try to boost the birth-rate with my observations on how having some children really CAN be beneficial to your dogs. Share it with your childless friends!

The rush to clone human embryos and cannibalize them for parts was somewhat slowed by the prospect that adult stem cells might make this process unnecessary. That didn’t stop Harvard from setting up a cutting-edge laboratory designed to—well, cut the little people up. Now it seems that the witch doctors of Burundi and Tanzania have been reading their Harvard alumni magazine.

One of the few activities of the U.S. Congress which we can unambiguously approve is its passage of non-binding resolutions. Such resolutions don’t take money from the pocket of Jane Taxpayer, or put coercive power in the hands of Alexander Bureaucrat. (For instance, in 2001, the U.S. House voted to encourage public schools to set aside a moment of silence for prayer.) So, it is the sense of this House that in 2009, Dr. John Zmirak should endeavor as much as possible to undertake these activities (within reason):

My Christmas piece has appeared at InsideCatholic.com, for those of you interested in the progress of my love live and the reproductive health of my dogs….

Or any other aspect of America’s political life, given the current state of things? I offer my own answer, alongside some genuine Catholic luminaries, over at InsideCatholic, in their new symposium. Check it out.