A timely political Easter sermon

Jesus knew viral marketing.

In the Gospel of Mark, the disciple John complains that nondisciples are selling bootlegged copies of Jesus� miraculous powers. �Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.�

Jesus tells John to quit obsessing about the intellectual property and to focus on getting the brand out. �Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.� Jesus adds, �Whoever is not against us is for us.�

Fast-forward two millennia. Weeks after 9/11, George Bush says roughly the opposite. His famous �You�re either with us or against us� means that those who don�t follow his lead will be considered enemies. The rest is history. Today, Jesus has more than a billion devoted followers. Mr. Bush has ... well, fewer than that.

The religious left � yes, there is such a thing � complains that Mr. Bush ignores the Bible�s moral injunctions. But leave morality aside. If he could just match the Bible�s strategic savvy, that would make a world of difference.

Consider a teaching of Jesus that seems on its surface devoid of strategic import. �You have heard that it was said, �You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.� But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.�

Christians often cast this verse as innovative, a sharp break from Jesus� Jewish tradition. But the same idea can be found in the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament), and here it is clear that the point of the kindness is to thwart the enemy: �If your enemies are hungry, give them bread to eat; and if they are thirsty, give them water to drink; for you will heap coals of fire on their heads.�

Coals of fire? As the editors of the New Oxford Annotated Bible explain, submitting to this treatment was an Egyptian ritual that �demonstrated contrition.� (And how!) �The sense here seems to be that undeserved kindness awakens the remorse and hence conversion of the enemies.�

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn�t. It�s unlikely that sending Osama bin Laden a Hallmark card would induce paroxysms of self-doubt. Still, there are other ways that reining in hatred can hurt your enemy�s cause.

Suppose, for example, you were nurturing a nascent religious movement in the Roman Empire, and your antagonists welcomed excuses to harass you. Suppose, that is, you were the Apostle Paul. When Paul preaches kindness to enemies, he uses not the formulation found in the Gospels, but the one from the Hebrew Bible, complete with the coals of fire.

Of course, Mr. Bush is more in the shoes of the Roman emperor than of Paul. America isn�t a small but growing religious movement. It�s a great power threatened by a small but growing religious movement � radical Islam. But the logic can work both ways. Great powers, by mindlessly indulging retributive impulses, can give fuel to small but growing religious movements. If you want to deprive jihadists of ammunition, make it hard for them to persuade others to hate us.

Right after Paul espouses kindness to enemies, he adds: �Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.� Sounds like na�ve moralizing until you look at those Abu Ghraib photos that have become Al Qaeda recruiting posters.

The key distinction is between man and meme. Yes, a great power can always kill and torment enemies, and, yes, there will always be times when that makes sense. Still, when you�re dealing with terrorists, it�s their memes � their ideas, their attitudes � that are Public Enemy No. 1. Jihadists are hosts for the virus of hatred, and the object of the game is to keep the virus from finding new hosts.

The Internet is fertile ground for memes, and jihadists are good at getting the brand out. One of the few things Osama bin Laden has in common with the Jesus of the Gospels is belief in the power of viral marketing.

The ultimate in viral marketing was Jesus� ultimate sacrifice. Deemed a threat to the social order, he was crucified under Roman auspices. But the Romans forgot one thing: If you face a small but growing movement that threatens the imperial order, you shouldn�t attack the men in ways that help the memes.

Mr. Bush says his favorite philosopher is Jesus. One way to show it would be to spend less time repeat- ing the mistake of the Romans and more time heeding the wisdom of Christ.

_________________

Robert Wright, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, runs the Web site Bloggingheads.tv.

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I was reading on ABC.com and found this article in the comments section. I don't know much about the Huffington Post, so this may be taken with a grain of salt. I thought it was interesting though.

Meet The (White) Man Who Inspired Wright's Controversial Sermon
Sam Stein
The Huffington Post
March 21, 2008

Meet the man who inspired Reverend Jeremiah Wright's now famous tirade about America's foreign policy inciting the terrorist attacks of September 11.

His name is Ambassador Edward Peck. And he is a retired, white, career U.S. diplomat who served 32-years in the U.S. Foreign Service and was chief of the U.S. mission to Iraq under Jimmy Carter -- hardly the black-rage image with which Wright has been stigmatized.

In fact, when Wright took the pulpit to give his post-9/11 address -- which has since become boiled down to a five second sound bite about "America's chickens coming home to roost" -- he prefaced his remarks as a "faith footnote," an indication that he was deviating from his sermon.

"I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday," Wright declared. "He was on Fox News. This is a white man and he was upsetting the Fox News commentators to no end. He pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Muhammad was in fact true: America's chickens are coming home to roost."

Wright then went on to list more than a few U.S. foreign policy endeavors that, by the tone of his voice and manner of his expression, he viewed as more or less deplorable. This included, as has been demonstrated in the endless loop of clips from his sermon, bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki and nuking "far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye."

"Violence begets violence," Wright said, "hatred begets hatred, and terrorism begets terrorism."

And then he concluded by putting the comments on Peck's shoulders: "A white ambassador said that yall, not a black militant, not a reverend who preaches about racism, an ambassador whose eyes are wide open and is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice... the ambassador said that the people we have wounded don't have the military capability we have, but they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them... let me stop my faith footnote right there."

So it seems that while Wright did believe American held some responsibility for 9/11, his views, which have been described as radically outside the political mainstream, were actually influenced by a career foreign policy official.

Who is Peck? The ambassador, who has offered controversial criticism of Israeli policy in the West Bank but also warned against the Iraq War, was lecturing on a cruise ship and was unavailable for comment. But officials at Peck's former organization, the Council for the National Interest, a non-profit group that advocates reducing Israel's influence on U.S. Middle East policy, offered descriptions of the man.

"Peck is very outspoken," said Eugene Bird, who now heads CNI. "He is also very good at making phrases that have a resonance with the American people. When he came off of that Fox News, a few days later he said they would never invite me back again."

And what, exactly, did Peck say in that Fox News interview that inspired Wright's words?

Here are some quotes from an appearance the Ambassador made on the network on October 11, 2001, which may or may not have been the segment Wright was referring to. On the show, Peck said he thought it was illogical to tie Saddam Hussein to the terrorist attacks on 9/11, and that while the then-Iraqi leader had "some very sound and logical reasons not to like [the United States]," he and Osama bin Laden had no other ties.

From there, Peck went on to ascribe motives for what prompted the 9/11 attacks. "Stopping the economic embargo and bombings of Iraq," he said, "things to which Osama bin Laden has alluded as the kinds of things he doesn't like. He doesn't think it's appropriate for the United States to be doing, from his perspective, all the terrible things that he sees us as having been doing, the same way Saddam Hussein feels. So from that perspective, they have a commonality of interests. But they also have a deeply divergent view of the role of Islam in government, which would be a problem."

There are many Democrats who belong to the Christian right. I am not sure why you feel politicizing religion is so important, but I realize how important labels are to you. It's unfortunate. Jimmy Carter just recently came out and spoke against the Democratic party for abandoning God. If Christians feel they have to place to turn but the *right*, whose fault is that? Pat Robertson doesn't speak for me. However, he is a good man and a Christian man. As far as calling for an assassination that's bogus and was taken out of context and anyone who cared to do their research would know that. But it's just way more convenient and fits into the left's philosophy to damn him to hell. THERE' s the left for you.

affiliation of serial killers. Sigh. What do you think Osama bin Laden would register as if he could register to vote....ummmm....don't think it would be with the Christian right.....? Are we going to try to list the perverts and see whose list is the longest? Why even post this, when you have cigar-wielding Bill Clinton on your list? Do you honestly think this man in the bathroom did what he did because he is a Republican? If so, that means Billy must have wielded the cigar because he is a Democrat....?

Subject: Will Obama get Osama, or will Osama get Obama?

After numerous rounds of 'We don't even know if Osama is still
alive', Barrack Hussein Obama has now been telling everyone he will
capture Osama Bin Laden when elected.

So, Osama himself decided to send Barrack Hussein Obama a letter in
his own handwriting to let him know he was still in the game.

Obama opened the letter and it contained a single line of coded
message:

370H-SSV-0773H

Obama was baffled, so he e-mailed it to Howard Dean.

Dean and the DNC and his aides had no clue either, so they sent it
to Joe Biden.

Joe Biden could not solve so it was sent to the FBI and the CIA.

Eventually they asked John McCain and his Staff to look at it.

And within minutes McCain's Staff e-mailed Obama with this reply:

Top 10 political newcomers of 2008
By: Alexander Burns
January 3, 2009 07:09 PM EST

Even in a year dominated by oversized political personalities � Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain chief among them � a few lesser-known newcomers helped define the electoral landscape.

These new arrivals on the national stage � relative unknowns who burst onto the scene, behind-the-scenes players who suddenly took on high-profile roles, politicians who took their act beyond their state�s borders � made 2008 a livelier, more engaging political year and seem likely to continue shaping the political environment for better or for worse.

Gov. Sarah Palin: The Alaska governor was a significant political figure in her own right before 2008, but in the span of just a few months the former Wasilla mayor exploded onto the national scene to become the first woman nominated for national office by the Republican Party and one of the most controversial political figures in the country.

Her introduction to the public wasn�t as smooth as it could have been: After a dazzling performance at the Republican National Convention, a series of campaign-trail missteps diminished Palin�s electoral appeal. But the GOP base never stopped loving Palin, and despite her ticket�s defeat, Palin remains an enormously popular conservative who�s poised to help determine the future of the party.

Caroline Kennedy: The last living child of President John F. Kennedy, the 51-year-old Manhattanite emerged from her famously private lifestyle in late January, writing a New York Times op-ed endorsing Obama for president.

A joint endorsement rally with her uncle, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), followed a day later, vaulting Caroline into the front lines of the presidential campaign. After the end of the Democratic primaries, she headed up Obama�s vice presidential selection process with Eric Holder and spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

Now she�s reportedly a leading contender for the Senate seat Clinton will vacate when she takes up her new post at the State Department. Quite a debut, even for a Kennedy.

David Plouffe: An unlikely celebrity, the Obama campaign manager usually attracts distinctly un-glitzy adjectives like �soft-spoken� and �camera-shy.� But as the operations guy behind the Obama phenomenon, Plouffe cultivated a reputation as a no-nonsense political chess master.

Plouffe won�t take a position within the administration, though he may continue to play a role shaping Obama�s movement outside the White House. He is, however, cashing in: he�s already signed on with the Washington Speakers Bureau and is penning a future best-seller, tentatively titled �The Audacity to Win.�

Sen.-elect Kay Hagan (D-N.C.): Few expected this obscure state legislator to have much of a shot against a political titan like Sen. Elizabeth Dole. Sure, Hagan was the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee�s anointed candidate, but most political prognosticators expected her campaign would fall short in the end.

But after winning her party�s nomination in May, Hagan proved an adept fundraiser and relentlessly attacked Dole as an out-of-touch Washington insider. By the fall, Hagan was surging, and when Dole blasted back with ads linking Hagan to an atheist group it backfired. Hagan won by 9 points.

In a non-presidential year, Hagan would likely have attracted more attention as a political giant-killer. Hagan will have to settle for a humbler title: United States senator.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.): Like Palin, Corker held high office before 2008. But it wasn�t until the Senate�s showdown over a proposed auto industry bailout that the former Chattanooga mayor distinguished himself as a serious player on the Hill.

Drawing praise from the GOP leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, as well as from Democrats like Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Corker took the lead in shaping the Republican counterproposal to Democrats� aid plan for Detroit.

His performance over the past month � which even a partisan like Durbin conceded was �magnificent� � makes him one of the few Republicans who looks better after Nov. 4 than he did before, standing out as a possible future leader in a party that�s been largely decapitated.

Meg Whitman: The former ebay CEO left her corporate post only about nine months ago. But thanks to her work on behalf of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney�s primary campaign, and the McCain-Palin ticket in the general election, Whitman is on her way to becoming a significant national political figure.

Though Palin ultimately took the prize, Whitman was buzzed about for the vice presidency after McCain listed her among the three wisest people he knew (the other two were Gen. David Petraeus and John Lewis, the Democratic congressman and civil rights hero). Whitman also delivered a solid, if unmemorable, speech at the Republican National Convention.

She�s now eyeing the 2010 California governor�s race, and with her business background and deep pockets Whitman has a real shot. If she were elected governor of the most-populous state in the nation, Whitman would immediately be find herself on the short list of Republican presidential contenders.

Beau Biden: During the Democratic convention, few speakers inspired as much on-air swooning as son of the now vice president-elect, Joe Biden. CNN�s David Gergen called Beau Biden�s address a �remarkably good speech� and �a home run.�

The 39-year-old Delaware attorney general's National Guard unit was deployed to Iraq in October. When he comes back, he�ll have the chance to put his famous name to use when his father�s Senate seat comes up for a special election in 2010. He hasn�t said that he�ll seek the job, but Joe Biden made his own preferences clear by engineering the appointment of a placeholder for the seat.

�It is no secret that I believe my son, Attorney General Beau Biden, would make a great United States senator, just as I believe he has been a great attorney general,� Biden said in a statement after his longtime aide, Ted Kaufman, was tapped for the seat in November.

Gov. David Paterson: When Paterson was elected lieutenant governor in 2006, New York�s political class viewed him to be a senator-in-waiting, ready to step up in the event Hillary Rodham Clinton won the presidency. An affable political operator with a wry sense of humor, Paterson was expected to spend a term or two in former Gov. Eliot Spitzer�s shadow until the crusading former prosecutor decided to go national.

That plan didn�t quite work out. Spitzer resigned in disgrace after a personal scandal, leaving Paterson in charge. Paterson, it seems, had a few skeletons of his own in the closet. Fresh off revelations of his own personal indiscretions, Paterson was then confronted by the Wall Street crisis, which has left New York�s budget in a shambles. Now he finds himself at the center of the succession spectacle over Clinton�s soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck: This slot might actually be an ensemble prize given to the entire cast of ABC's �The View,� the women�s chat show which emerged this year as morning television�s most entertaining and unlikely forum for political debate.

But if there�s one member of the show�s cast who stood out, it was former �Survivor� contestant-turned-conservative pundit Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

Cut from a different mold than your typical right-of-center talking head, Hasselbeck frequently clashed with her considerably more liberal co-hosts, including the venerable Barbara Walters, by defending the McCain-Palin campaign. In October, Hasselbeck went so far as to campaign with the GOP vice presidential candidate in Florida.

If there were any doubts about her stature as a rising GOP pundit, they were dispelled last week. After complaining on the air that she didn�t receive an invitation this year�s White House Christmas party, Hasselbeck promptly received a apology from the White House. It turned out she had been invited but her invitation did not arrive on time.

Rachel Maddow: Since taking over the 9 p.m. slot on MSNBC, Maddow has posted strong ratings by finally giving liberal cable-watchers the show they�ve always wanted. Less combative than Chris Matthews and less self-righteous than Keith Olbermann, the former Rhodes Scholar has defined herself as a thoughtful, sharp � and sharp-tongued � host who presents her perspective on the news without being cranky, gimmicky and repetitive.

For Maddow, as for all liberal commentators, the question is how she�ll keep her audience engaged without the Bush administration serving as a foil. Judging from her quick start, it�s a good bet she�ll figure out a way.

You�ve never paid any attention to politics until Obama ran for President, and now you�ve become a political expert by reading Huffington Post and/or Daily Kos.

You fly into a rage when anyone suggests Obama is unqualified for the presidency.

For the first time in your life, you are proud of your country, but only because it elected a black president.

You believe that with Obama as president, this is a New Age when all wars will end, everyone will be provided for, and you don�t have to worry about paying your mortgage anymore!

You think Obama is a Great Man because of his magnificent accomplishments � like getting elected, and uh, uh, uh�

You think all Hillary Clinton supporters are middle-aged lesbians (not that there�s anything� yada yada yada� )

You believe PUMAs are Republicans pretending to be disaffected Democrats, kind of like Joe Lieberman.