Speaking of enemies

If you need a simple, secular, reason to "love your enemies," look no further than the example of Dr. Thomas E. Woods. (Full disclosure: I had a family member by marriage, a person I dearly love, buy Dr. Woods' book from the bookstore were I work a few days a week, as a gift for a relative. "Love your enemy," indeed.) The motivation for Dr. Woods and his "League of the South" comes down to this:

And it would include, presumably, Hill's claim—in an official League of the South press release—that "[t]he 'Reverend' 'Dr.' Martin Luther King, Jr., far from being the saint of recent liberal myth, was nothing but a philandering, plagiarizing, left-wing agitator."

For Dr. Woods' League of the South, the NAACP, you see, is an "enemy" with which the League of the South is "at war." According to the League's President, Dr. Michael Hill, League members "know that the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of the world are nothing but vile race hustlers and that 'institutional racism' is merely an excuse to mask black failure and to justify lawless and aggressive behavior against 'white oppressors.' . . . [T]he leftist agenda on race is pretty clear," says Woods' colleague. "The question is, what are we white traditionalists going to do about it?"

And then there is this, that I picked up via Athenae at First Draft, from Keith Olberman.

It goes back to the core of the Dobsonian point of view here: the fear of the “pro-Homosexual” agenda. That may be the way he delicately phrases it, but it is not shared by most of his followers who emailed me. They were clearly angry that there was no anti-homosexual agenda.

Frankly, to have "enemies" like this is the height of hubris. It is to imagine yourself the center of the universe, and your "self" being violated because at the boundaries there are those who are "impure." It is the issue of identity. If someone in your community is not like you, then who are you? Which brings the issue down to this simple, psychological truth: that which you most oppose, you most come to resemble. And that which you most love? Do you come to resemble it, too? Or to resemble love?

ADDENDUM: It occurs to me: that which you love, you come to resemble, too. Relationships alter who you are. And it really is all about relationships. An enemy, by definition, is the one you hate. So: do you want to be defined by hate? Or by love?