First, I think more Americans need to declare their independence from partisan politics on both sides. The more that Americans declare their independence, the more the parties will have to compete for their votes using reason rather than the hateful appeals.

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'

We need to punch back against the extremes of both the left and the right and define the terms of the debate ourselves.

I'm an independent. I'm a centrist. A new generation is arriving that has grown up with a multiplicity of choice in every aspect of their lives, and yet politics is the last place that they are told that they should be satisfied with a choice between brand A and brand B. It doesn't fit the way they think. It doesn't fit the way they live.

I believe that the far-right and the far-left can be equally insane - but there's no question that in the first years of the Obama administration, the far-right has been far crazier. In part, this comes from parties being out of power - without the responsibility of governing to ground them, the activists and the ideologues take over.

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.