The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the American President, Barack Hussein Obama. Already, the haters have begun sipping the haterade, brewed under a dark sun of vicious discontent. 

 

Now, three sitting American Presidents have received the prize: Theodore Roosevelt (1906) for ending the Russo-Japanese War, Woodrow Wilson (1919) for the ill-fated founding of the League of Nations and Barack Obama (2009), for his advocacy of peace and reconciliation. Now, Barack Obama has entered the lexicon of the ages as an elect advocate for peace, with an honor that even a luminary like Mohandas Gandhi never received. 

 

President Obama's speech this morning was aimed at a domestic audience concerned about unfinished and new wars, an economic tsunami and unemployment that threatens the very foundation of American prosperity. His humble and deflective tenor gives his adversaries nothing new to latch on to in the attempt to dim his star even further. Despite the controversial history of the Nobel Peace Prize, its universal mandate of peace highlights issues of intense concern not only for Americans, but for the world as a whole. Warfare, climate and repression threaten the capacity for peace and progress in every country even as our world reaches a series of tipping points past which there is no return.