(0) Leaving this page substantially empty, as it was for a couple 
of weeks, has a certain self-referential charm, but on balance I 
prefer to watch myself scribble.  Sorry about that.

(1) The cause of the Empire is the cause of us all.  In Century 
XII Monk Hildebrand provoked the Investiture Conflict, and eight 
hundred years later Priest Neuhaus carries on with his attempted 
Public Square Disvestiture Conflict.  Delegitimating the imperial 
regime is the patent common element here.

(2) A peripheral word of praise for the bad guy: Citizen Neuhaus's 
figure of rhetoric has an elegant subliminal (or at least 
subgenteel) message, for some people are bound to think of the 
photographic nakedness commercially available in so many of our 
public squares.  I just noted an Asian Values fan who was broad-
minded enough to allow that Christianity and pornography and "the 
West" are not merely three names for one thing.

(3) Still, if the Asian Valuers want to keep out pornography next 
week, perhaps they should keep Christianity out today?  If it 
degenerated that way elsewhere, shouldn't they be on the safe 
side?

(4) More seriously, around these parts (secularizing eastern 
Massachusetts) a "public square" hardly ever means an equilateral 
rectangular enclosure.  What it means, in fact, is an 
intersection.  They aren't literally naked, because there are 
street signs and traffic lights, all maintained by Caesar.  If we 
wish our intersections more adorned than they are, however, 
wouldn't the adornments just be so many obstacles to traffic?

(5) Obstructing  traffic, though technically an offense against 
Caesar, is really much more important an affair, since it risks 
incurring the grave displeasure of Mammon Himself.

(6) When I figuratively say "Caesar," I mean "taxpayer expense."  
It is impossible that even elsewordly Priest Neuhaus doesn't know 
who Mammon is.  Verb. sap.

(7) Another small good word for Citizen Neuhaus: we imperialists 
can sympathize with his religionist clients as he depicts them, 
frightened folk who must hide their religionism in public places 
as if it were a loathsome skin disease or a withered limb.  We 
feel about Mammon as his portrayed cringing godly feel about 
Caesar--mutatis, needless to add, mutandis.

(8) "Pssst! NAFTA is a crock. Pass it on!"

(9) Compare and contrast item (8) with "Pssst! Jesus Christ is God 
and King!  Pass it on!"

(10) Be the quantitative comparison what it may, surely both these 
oppressed and suppressed messages share the same quality, that of 
social unrespectability?  Put them together and you're in Patrick 
Buchanan territory.  Need one say more?  Could one say worse?

(11) Yes, one could say worse, and I will, and it goes like this: 
"Pssst! the Supreme Court is basically right about church-state 
relations."

(12) It really looks like nobody but the Supreme Court and I agree 
with (11), and their ex officio respectability is no help to worms 
like me.  So almost any thoroughly sound free-lance imperialist is 
bound to understand how Priest Neuhaus fancies that his cowering 
client religionists feel.  "If I say THAT out loud, they'll just 
laugh at me and never take me seriously again."

(13) Any sound imperialist must recognize that laughing at people 
and not taking them seriously is a problem that would be well 
worth addressing, if only there were a solution not worse than the 
problem.  Caesar can bloviate and pontificate about "human 
dignity" or the like, which does little harm and less good.  
Caesar can also try to legislate in this area, which does great 
harm and no good at all: the nasty term "political correctness" 
has recently wound up meaning the sort of harm involved.  This is 
a case where Caesar probably does best by doing nothing.  Nothing, 
that is to say, beyond making quite sure that Caesar ourselves 
does nothing in our official capacity that amounts to laughing at 
people or not taking them seriously.

(14) The Neuhaus Disvestiture Question, stated from the 
imperialist or Supreme Court side, is whether Caesar (as we now 
constitute him) does or does not laugh at people and refuse to 
take them seriously just because they are client-side 
religionists.  The charge seems to me entirely absurd, insofar as 
it purports to be a political charge.  That Verafideism is mocked 
and dismissed at the Faculty Club (or other such private 
precincts) is not a political charge; it must be disentangled from 
Priest Neuhaus's general indictment of How Things Are In America 
and summarily quashed.  Caesar can take no proper cognizance of 
such things.  (Cognizance is "proper" when taking it is better 
than leaving it.  Nothing I say about practice should be construed 
to infringe on Caesar's theoretical sovereignty.)  But if 
Verafideism were being mocked and dismissed by public agents in 
the proper course of their official duties, serious questions 
about the legitimacy of our imperial regime would indeed arise.

(15) The Neuhaus Disvestiture Question exists grammatically only 
in a contrary-to-fact conditional mode.  "If Caesar were acting 
badly, he would have to reform."  Sure, granted, by all means! but 
in fact we're acting correctly enough.  The last thing we need is 
a "Religious Freedom Restoration Bill."  Non reformanda quia non 
deformata, if you'll pardon my French.  It doesn't need to be 
fixed because it ain't broke.