The Boston Herald offers a checklist for municipalities in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to use for testing.

It used to be that there were only a handful of People’s Republics among the Commonwealth’s 351 cities and towns. You had Cambridge, Amherst, Lincoln, Brookline and a couple of others.

These are the la-de-da burgs that erect walls and speed bumps at the town line to keep out the city riffraff who make up that wonderful diversity the suburban swells claim to celebrate.

Only last week Brookline Town Meeting called for the impeachment of President Bush.

The problem is that the Brookline Syndrome appears to be spreading. As normal Americans flee Massachusetts by the tens of thousands, one town after another topples to the moonbat contagion.

Allowing illegal aliens to vote – what a great idea!

Just this week Wrentham, of all places, almost pulled a Cambridge. Local school administrators attempted to shun two graduating high school seniors who had gotten into West Point. As any NPR listener will tell you, these kids are nothing more than future war criminals. Remember Hidatha! The only way the Massachusetts Teachers Association supports two West Pointers is if they want to marry each other.

Perhaps you’ve been wondering if your community is in danger of “tipping.” Here are some of the telltale indicators of a town at risk:

You can’t remember the last time a Proposition 2 ? override was voted down.

Deval Patrick won 64 of 67 delgates in the city. (Somerville, this means you.)

Aging hippies hold candlelight vigils on the Common to protest (fill in the blank).

The population is 99 percent white, and the ballot is in 12 languages.

At least one obscure Globe columnist lives in the town.

At high school graduation, 30 flags are on display, one for each Third World hellhole the illegal aliens in the class of ’06 left behind.

Only one flag is banned, the one the kids no longer pledge allegiance to in the morning, lest they have to utter the proscribed words “under God.”

Two words: bike paths.

You may be living in a People’s Republic if the phrase “transgendered community” is increasingly heard at School Committee meetings.

Or if they no longer keep score in the youth soccer leagues, so as not to damage any child’s self-esteem. And if the next step is to make all games “silent,” with cheering banned to remove any pressure from the little tykes.

If the town’s Person of the Year is the librarian who refused to let FBI agents enter the main branch of the public library after a “patron” e-mailed a detailed terrorist threat to a nearby college.

If skateboarders have more rights than disabled veterans.

If the Unitarian-Universalist church has a female pastor with a crew cut who lives with her “wife” in the parsonage where the Rev. Loring once raised five children.

The last Republican state rep moved out of the town – and the state.

The new Democratic rep was born and raised in New York.

You may be living in a People’s Republic if the town fathers have banned not only Golden Arches, but also headstones in cemeteries.

Or if the town has a “sanctuary committee,” even though the median price of a home last year was $1.2 million.

The merchants on Main Street no longer put out American flags on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, lest they be threatened with a boycott by the local Democratic Town Committee.

You may be living in a People’s Republic if you sadly realize that you were better off with Denis McKenna as your state senator than Pat Jehlen.