President Obama is only the third sitting president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  Conservative Americans should be cheering.

Instead, we read only jeering from FOX News:

In a clear dig at former President George W. Bush, a State Department spokesman compared President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize to the flying footwear his predecessor faced in Iraq.

“From our standpoint, you know, we think that this gives us a sense of momentum … when the United States has accolades tossed its way, rather than shoes,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters on Friday.

Crowley was referring to a 2008 incident in which an Iraqi reporter hurled his shoe at Bush during a news conference in Baghdad. The act of protest struck a chord with millions in the Arab and Muslim worlds who had been captivated and angered by daily images of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

This is from the only article on the FOX News home page this evening relating to the honor afforded the president today:
State Department Lauds Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize by Making Jab at Bush.

This is not a dig at former President Bush. This is the truth. It was not a long ago that President Bush stood at a podium and dodged shoes thrown at him. Look:

FOX News should be cheering the fact that the United States of America has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Instead, FOX News is still fixated with former President Bush.

We should all cheer America today. This is our day.

We’re finished with FOX News.

By William Herman

Karl Marx was wrong about a lot of things. He was a heavy drinker who rarely worked a day in his life. Instead he opted to hang out at the library and pontificate on issues out of context with his personal reality.

But ‘ol Karl hit one nail on the head….Dialectics. ..The concept of the pendulum swing of social thought and behavior. The notion that social behavior and action tends to move from one extreme to another.

Moving forward to the year of our Lord 2000 A.D., George W. Bush was elected president of the United States by the slimmest of margins. Under the banner of “Compassionate Conservatism”, George W. became our 43rd president.

Early on in his presidency, Bush was faced w/dealing with the worst catastrophe to hit American soil. To his credit, he responded righteously. With megaphone in hand, the former Yale cheerleader rallied America to come together as a nation. He crafted a solid plan to hold those accountable for their horrific acts on 9/11. It was his finest hour.

But beyond 9/11, the Bush presidency was flat and ineffectual. Though necessary, the war in Afghanistan and the amassing of the ginormous Office of Homeland Security, came w/heavy financial burdens. And despite being a nation at war, he pushed forward tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which further exacerbated fiscal concerns.

Bush continued to spend money like a drunken sailor. What has now been proven to be a war entered under false premises, the second combat offensive in Iraq began. While some argued the removal of ‘the Butcher of Bagdad’ justified the means, others countered the lose of life and added fiscal burdens did not.

On the home front, lax banking regulations and even laxer enforcement, opened the doors for Wall St speculators to essentially rape and pillage, amassing unheard of and undeserved fortunes. Wall St. CEO pay continued its meteoric rise, while the standard of living of most everyone else declined.

At the other end of the financial spectrum was Hurricane Katrina. The dismal failure of the FEMA response and the visual images thereof, left little doubt in the minds of most Americans, that “Compassionate Conservatism’ was a sham. It became clear America was broken.

Finally, at the end of Bush’s 2nd term, the 300 lb. gorilla entered the room. Soaring budget deficits, the housing and banking debacles, and rising unemployment created a perfect storm. Bush’s response….give everybody a check for $1000, and a two page plan to rescue banks. Not only was this response woefully inadequate, it exposed the naivety and lack of vision of the Bush administration…..The pendulum of social change had furiously swung, and opened the door for sweeping change.

To date, the verdict is out on who will heed the lessons of historical dialectics. While the Obama administration continues to bring its vision of sweeping change, it is doing so on the thin ice of mounting fiscal deficits. Both, how much Obama’s plans will cost, and how much debt the American taxpayer can stomach is still open for debate.

What is not open for debate, is the need for the Republican party to redefine it’s line of conservatism. Conservatism needs to recognize the falling economic expectations of the middle and lower classes. It needs to be more inclusive to changing American demographics. And while it clearly must grab the mantra of fiscal responsibility, in need do so in a manner consistent to both these new ethnic and economic demographics.

Republicans must move beyond their current path as ‘the party of No’. They must redefine themselves as the party with new conservative ideas. Otherwise, conservatism as we know it, is doomed to extinction. And with its demise, so too will Liberalism come crashing down; because ‘the Left’ simply cannot exist without ‘a Right.’…..Such are the lessons of dialectics.

Former President George W. Bush is  no conservative.  He is  a Movement Conservative.

We fought the term movement conservative the first time we heard it, believing it to be yet another polemical liberal rant.

Online, we find two opposing definitions of movement conservativism.  We disagree with this one, from the so-called Conservapedia:

A movement conservative is one who supports all or nearly all conservative principles with a coherent philosophy, and who advances broad conservative goals both individually and through teamwork. This is contrasted with cafeteria, or single-issue, or self-serving approaches.

Put another way, a movement conservative is a conservative who seeks to help others, and the nation, by explaining, advocating and defending the logical and beneficial conservative approach. A movement conservative is not primarily seeking political gain for himself, but advocates the insights and values of conservatism for the benefit of others.

Prominent movement conservatives, according to Conservapedia, include former President Ronald Reagan, the late Senator Jesse Helms, the late Congressman John Ashbrook, Phyllis Schlafly, Justice Clarence Thomas, John Bolton, and Rush Limbaugh.

We’ve already discussed and dismissed Limbaugh, although we’re pleased to do so again.

Nowhere in the above definition do the words “critical thinking” or “critical thinker” appear.  The people listed in the Conservapedia entry were or are very divisive.  Senator Jesse Helms was no thinker. And, yes, we supported Ronald Reagan, but he exploded the deficit.  We gave in to greed, and we regret it.

Here  is another definition of movement conservatism from Soulfource:

Movement Conservatism is a self-serving and socially malevolent cabal of mega-corporations, right-wing think tanks in Washington, their archconservative foundation benefactors, and an intricate nationwide network of linkages in the communications media, religion, higher education, and law. It has been called the “conservative labyrinth,” and common to all its elements is a theology of “free markets,” an ideology coming to full bloom in the Administration of George W. Bush. Today, the G.O.P. seeks to impose it at every turn.

Yes, we know both of these sources are terribly biased.

But that’s our point.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle.  Washington, D.C. has become polarized, and this needs to stop.  The movement conservatives are running our Grand Old Party into the ground.  If they are permitted to continue their destructive course, they will reduce it to the size where they can “…drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub,” to paraphrase Grover Norquist.

Government is not the problem.  Movement conservatives are the problem, and they’re ruining our party.  The Republican Party must disown them.

We desperately need the leadership and direction from those who still have a spark of moderation, like Senator John McCain.

The Tea Parties must stop.  The Birthers must be silenced.  As it stands now, wise conservative voices are lost in the bedlam of movement conservatism.  The inmates are running the asylum.  We must take our party back and focus once again on ideas, not ideology.

We must ask ourselves, which do we love more: the United States of America, or the noise lunacy our current Republican leaders substitute for leadership?