A wingnut is someone on the far-right wing or far-left wing of the political spectrum - the professional partisans, the unhinged activists and the paranoid conspiracy theorists. They're the people who always try to divide rather than unite us.

It's important to remember that Bush Derangement Syndrome on the left - comparing him to Hitler, calling him a terrorist and a tyrant - preceded Obama Derangement Syndrome on the right.

If you only take offense when the president of your party is compared to Hitler, then you're part of the problem.

One tell-tale sign of a Wingnut: they always confuse partisanship with patriotism.

The two parties are still more polarized than ever before and the rise of partisan media is an important reason for it.

Right now, politics follows the rules of talk radio - using conflict, tension, fear, and resentment to find new recruits.

But in his Farewell Address, George Washington made it clear that he perceived no greater threat to the American experiment than a partisan demagogue who 'agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against the other'