My post on the Manhatten Declaration has elicited the enthusaistic support of many, the ire of an angry few, and the well-deserved chastening of my much-beloved loyal opposition for whom I am more grateful than I can ever express.

Therefore, and nevertheless, this recent treatment deserves mention for its rhetorical brilliance and right-on-the-money beingness. Here’s just one snippet:

And at one level it’s impossible to view these pretentious peacocks, these Malvolios grimacing and strutting in their yellow stockings, without succumbing to the derisive laughter they deserve. Such self-inflation demands deflation. And anyway it can’t be helped. I mean, just listen to them:

We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.

The whole thing is like that — like a bad parody of the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V. Except of course that Henry was outnumbered. Here instead we have a group of powerful elites, men at the center of political, cultural, academic and ecclesiastical privilege bemoaning their oppression at the hands of the homosexuals and religious minorities they claim run the world. They are overlords posing as underdogs. (It’s hard out there for a pope.)

And while that’s ridiculous, it’s not really funny. The claim of oppression is laughably bogus, but the blood on their hands is all too real. A parody of the St. Crispin’s Day speech has comic potential, but a parody of the St. Crispin’s Day speech as delivered by the pilot of the Enola Gay is too bitterly callous even for my bleak taste in comedy.

Mine too, hence my speech, as overly-incendiary and unwieldy as it may often be.