Much of the Declaration is a list of grievances against the British king. One of them states, "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance." Sound familiar? The Regressives have brought us right back where we started from, returning us to a state of arbitrary and unchecked expansion of government power that our forebears fought a revolution to end and designed the Constitution to prevent. How did this happen?

The legitimate legislative powers of Congress (called enumerated powers) are set forth mainly in Section 8 of Article I of the Constitution. What's really instructive is what's not in Section 8: agriculture, housing, education, health care, welfare, transportation, and more. These things constitute the great majority of federal spending and are violations of the rule of law. Every vote for them is a violation of the legislator's oath of office to support the Constitution. Nearly all originated with the Democrats and continue to be supported by them. Opponents of expanded federal powers, rather than being praised as principled statesmen for being faithful to their oath, are more typically scorned as mean-spirited, narrow-minded, hateful, miserly or worse by the left-wing national media, which function as the propaganda arm of the Democrats. Constitutionality is of no concern to them.

The Constitution’s list of enumerated powers is a minimal list of things necessary to unite a collection of previously independent states into a cohesive nation. At the time of the ratification debates, many expressed concern that there was no check on expansion of federal powers beyond this list. Therefore, the Tenth Amendment, the last article of the Bill of Rights, was passed, reading: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The Tenth Amendment is still theoretically in force but is generally simply ignored. Democrats, in connivance with Supreme Court justices, shyster lawyers and RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) have dishonestly "interpreted" the Commerce Clause (intended only to prevent the states from regulating interstate commerce – the key word is among), the words General Welfare, and now the taxing authority of Congress (all three in Article I, Section 8) to give Congress authority to do just about anything, making these words into enormous, all-purpose loopholes. The Regressives have destroyed our protection against government expansion that the Bill of Rights was intended to provide. The new health care law is only the latest nightmare that their assault on our Bill of Rights has produced. If any of these three loopholes had been intended and understood to give Congress (the United States) unlimited powers, then the Tenth Amendment would have been completely meaningless since there would have been no powers at all denied to the federal government or reserved to the states or people.

Do unconstitutional federal expenditures accomplish any good? Sure, and many are very popular. But that's not the test of their validity. If they are unlawful they should not exist. It wouldn't be difficult for any of us to do lots of good for others given unlimited access to other people's money. But funding good works by forcibly confiscating our neighbors' money through the unlawful exercise of the power of government is not commendable charity. It is theft. President Obama correctly notes that we are our brother’s keeper, but he and his party habitually violate God’s law to love our neighbor as our selves. If we will not love our neighbors by abiding by those parts of our Constitution that protect them, including protection for their wealth and income and equal protection of the laws, why should they honor the provisions that protect our concerns, whatever they may be, including freedom of speech or religion, voting rights or anything else? Democrats imagine themselves as victims but they are really the victimizers when they abuse the power of government, stealing not just our money but our freedoms as well. This is the source of much justifiable anger for which Democrats then falsely accuse their opponents of hate, bigotry, racism and partisan games.

Democrats have even less understanding and respect for our economic system than they do for our governmental system. They’ve been punishing American businesses with excessive regulations and driving capital and jobs overseas where profits can still be made. Their leftist constituencies regard profits as a dirty word. But without profits no one has a job, no one has a retirement income and no government has any revenues. They believe in taxing things we need more of (capital, profits, income, savings) so that we'll get less of them and subsidizing things we need less of (family breakdown, non-marital childbearing, fraudulent education, government dependence) so that we'll get more of them. Much of their economic agenda is a prescription for social as well as fiscal disaster.

Much of federal spending has become little more than the largest source of campaign funding in that it buys the votes of particular constituencies (with your money and mine). If you are receiving any federal benefit or income stream (Social Security, Food Stamps, Pell Grants, etc.) and preventing any possibility of its reduction is the primary consideration in determining your vote, then you have been bought. The Democrats have you right where they want you. It is no accident that President Obama has hugely increased the number of federal benefit recipients. He knows exactly what he is doing.

Democrats so shamelessly demagogued Social Security and Medicare that they squandered decades, making the necessary fixes more painful, especially for younger workers. Having been bought with other programs, the young will still reward them with votes.

All issues are important in their own right. But if our approaches to these issues violate our common commitment as a people to sticking up for each other's constitutionally protected fundamental human rights, including the rights to life, liberty and the quiet enjoyment of the fruits of our own labors, we risk losing the qualities that define us as a people. American values are based in love of neighbor and expressed by abiding by the rule of law, both God's law and man's law. How we do things matters, not just results.

The main issue in the coming election, as in all elections, is us – We the People – our values, principles and moral character. We all have a critical interest in cultivating these things in ourselves and among our fellow citizens. Even our economic problems have arisen from moral problems: massive fraud, liar loans, worthless mortgages sold as investment grade securities and unconstitutional government interference in the mortgage market to shift the risk from people who otherwise wouldn’t qualify for loans to the rest of us.

But the worst reflection of our moral degeneracy is the acceptance of prenatal living human sacrifice, primarily by live dismemberment, to the idols this nation now worships, otherwise known as abortion rites. This nation spits in the face of God over three thousand times every single day and then has the audacity to call it freedom and still say, "God bless America." The fact that Obama, Debbie Stabenow and many others, nearly all Democrats, could support an atrocity like partial-birth abortion, which was done only to deny the recognition and protections of citizenship that come with birth, and still be considered legitimate candidates for any public office, is an appalling commentary on the morally degraded state of the electorate. Or maybe it’s a commentary on the effectiveness of the left-wing media in keeping such information from us. As a state senator in Illinois, Obama actually refused to support protection for babies aborted alive that could have survived. He is a man without a conscience, totally unfit for any public office, much less our presidency. But the propaganda arm of his party, the national media, constantly cover for him. (See www.mrc.org)

If you think you can use your precious right to vote, that so many have died to secure, to empower and promote the Democrats’ agenda of theft, prenatal child-slaying and moral degradation of our people, without being held accountable, you’d better think again. If there’s ever anything even remotely resembling a Judgment Day, I wouldn’t recommend entering it having done such evil in this life.

The Bible tells us that God punishes nations that sacrifice their children to idols by turning them over to their enemies (see Psalm 106:37-42 and Jeremiah 19:3-9). If at some future time we are subjected to catastrophic attack by bio-weapons, electromagnetic pulse, cyber weapons, dirty bombs or other current technological realities, remember what you just read here and how you reacted to it.

The left-wing media have shown us the bodies of genocide victims from Europe, Rwanda and Cambodia, among other places, but have never shown us the bodies of American abortion victims. Their cover-up continues since the truth would harm their party.

Obama and his party are waging cultural imperialism by forcing abortion on other nations, mainly predominantly Catholic and Muslim nations, through the United Nations, other international agencies and the American diplomatic corps. Only you can stop them.

I think of DEMOCRATS as an acronym for "Demagogic, Extreme Malcontents, Obstructing, Corrupting and Regressing by Attacking Traditions and Standards." These include self-reliance, personal virtue and responsibility, monogamous and heterosexual marriage, the nuclear family, private initiative, free enterprise, the rule of law and the sanctity of human life. DEMOCRATS are working to destroy all of them. DEMOCRATS support the regressive Roe v. Wade decision, which reduced us from a unique nation based on the premise that we are endowed with our fundamental human rights by God (see the second paragraph of the Declaration), to just another nation based on might makes right. They have degraded the moral character of our people, building a culture of dependency with a prevailing attitude of entitlement. Obama talks a good line about uniting us, but he and his party practice divide and conquer with a vengeance. They divide our people by class, sex, race, religion, generations, language groups and financial interests into multiple constituencies, each bought by one or more typically unconstitutional government entitlements that DEMOCRATS can stay in power by promoting, and then instilling fear of their loss. They divide us into tax payers and tax beneficiaries. They divide income from work, knowledge from schooling, certification from achievement, advancement from merit, benefits from fiscal realities, morality from law, power from accountability, legislation from constitutional authority, voting from citizenship and being alive, responsibilities from freedoms, punishment from crime, adverse consequences from incompetence, the right to life from prenatal lives (so much for the "little guy"), children from parental authority, fatherhood from family, religion from moral development, and sex from love, commitment and marriage. Their operating principles appeal to the worst in us. They include "envy thy neighbor," "blame thy neighbor," "falsely accuse thy neighbor," "corrupt thy neighbor," "soak thy neighbor," and "abort thy neighbor." In the slash and burn politics of the DEMOCRATS, the Party harvests the votes and reaps the short-term, windfall profits of political power by cultivating anger and despair while destroying the self-reliance, self-confidence, self-esteem, initiative, hopes and dreams of those they claim to be the saviors of. Their messages are "You don't have a prayer without us" and "You can't." It is a constant torrent of psychological and spiritual poison.

I vote Republican because even a decent Democrat’s seat counts toward the majority such that the worst of them would control all the committees of a legislative chamber. Should they win a majority, much good and necessary legislation would never get out of committee and much that is bad, such as the health care law, could be approved and signed into law. It’s not worth the risk.

Al Lemmo, Republican Delegate, Precinct 24, Dearborn, Michigan

I am solely responsible for this letter which is not authorized, endorsed or paid for by any political party, candidate or other entity.

Water boiling yet? Are we Greece yet? America transformed yet? Constitution meaningless yet? Keep voting Democrat!