The coming elections in November are not just a battle between two senators. This election may help determine whether America continues to function under a capitalistic system or takes a sharp turn to the left and begins a descent into socialism that will eventually destroy the American economy.

Barack Obama has made no secret of his program if the American people are foolish enough to elect him. He will push Congress for laws raising personal and business taxes, doubling the capital gains tax, enacting an excess profits tax on the oil companies and other businesses, and turning the American health-care system into a socialized medicine government department controlled and administered by the same bureaucrats who are responsible for wasting billions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid programs.

Moreover, Obama has pledged that he will seek to bestow health-care benefits on the 15 to 20 million illegal aliens residing unlawfully in the United States.

Americans who do not take Barack Hussein Obama at his word will learn that he favors redistributing income and will probably be able to appoint three justices to the Supreme Court, who will change the face of America for decades to come.

When the Founding Fathers created our tripartite form of government, the Supreme Court was considered to be a relatively minor partner. Certainly they never anticipated that nine unelected justices with lifetime appointments would become the final arbiters of American culture. Nor would they have believed that liberal justices would base their decisions on the laws and court decisions of other nations.

The purpose of the court is to determine whether a specific act of Congress and the Executive is constitutionally authorized. Certainly our founders would have been incredulous that justices would create rights that were neither authorized by nor included in the United States Constitution.

Liberal justices have created a provision of privacy in order to justify a woman's right to an abortion. The founders would not have believed that these same liberal justices would justify the taking of private property. Even in the recent five-four decision affirming the right of Americans to keep and bear arms, the changing of just a single vote would have denied rights granted under the first 10 amendments, the Bill of Rights.

Critics of this decision would have us believe that while all nine provisions protected the rights of individuals, the Second Amendment alone protected the rights of government. As for the canard that more guns mean more crimes, Professor Lott has demonstrated repeatedly that where honest citizens can arm themselves for protection, violent crime decreases.

The justices got it right on the Second Amendment, but they were egregiously wrong when they ruled that terrorists, not members of a uniformed army but captured on a foreign battlefield and incarcerated in a foreign country, had the constitutional right to defend themselves in American courts.

In this ruling, the court ignored historical antecedents that date back at least to the Civil War and which were practiced right up through World War II when Nazi saboteurs were tried by military tribunals and executed. Terrorists held in Guantanamo are treated with kid gloves. A number of these terrorists already released have rejoined their comrades and are killing Americans.

In the case concerning child rapists, here again liberals whose every utterance is to foster and protect children decided that the perverted scum who raped innocent children cannot be executed. Instead, they will live in the relative comfort of our modern prisons, where complete gymnasia, color televisions, conjugal visitation rights, and law libraries that would be the envy of many legal departments would all be provided at taxpayer expense.

In many prisons, homosexual and heterosexual sex occurs, and recreational drugs are plentiful. Of course, free medical and dental care are provided, and in some cases the government (read "taxpayer") even provides free college tuition. So much for what constitutes punishment for convicted offenders.

Obama promises change. The kind of change he envisions frightens me. We will elect him at our peril.

Dr. Walter Schoen, a retired psychotherapist and college president, may be reached at sherylpoole@comcast.net.