Four decades ago, I raised my right hand and swore an oath “to support and defend” the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. As a U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18 pilot, I flew in combat, fighting for our Constitution and our nation’s interests abroad. But here at home, I was dissuaded from expressing my thoughts, let alone taking any action concerning the “long train of abuses and usurpations” that I saw coming from our government. As a member of the armed services, I served the commander-in-chief and the Department of Defense, and, as such, I found myself muzzled and unable to fight these assaults on our liberties.

After I retired from the Marine Corps, the muzzle was removed. I began to write, not so much to fight, per se, but to educate, inform, and persuade anyone who read my words. As I watched Barack Obama fundamentally change America over his eight years in office, and after seeing the effects of the Bush and Clinton “dynasties” prior to that, I yearned for another form of “hope and change,” one that I saw in a presidential candidate who came from way out in “left field.”

In 2016, like many voters then, I was frustrated with “politics as usual” in Washington, DC. Even more so, I was totally disgusted with the thought of a 2016 presidential contest that would be a battle between the Bush and Clinton “dynasties.” I was looking for something different.

Despite the advice from a good friend and well-respected political analyst to consider other primary candidates, I voted for Donald J. Trump. My friend’s outstanding research and analysis pointed to several other fine Republican candidates who were certainly worthy of my vote, but they were all “career politicians” in one form or another. They were all, to a certain degree, “swamp creatures,” and, in my frustration with “politics as usual,” I didn’t want to vote for yet another “swamp creature.”

I didn’t give Trump very good odds of being selected as the Republican nominee for president. He’d never served in government. He’d never been a governor, a senator, a military general, or the vice president — the typical pathways to the presidency. But I figured what the hell; I’ll throw my vote to Trump in the primaries, and then I’ll vote for whichever candidate they ultimately choose at the Republican National Convention. Needless to say, I was shocked when Trump swept the floor of 21 other Republican candidates. I also think the Left was caught “flat-footed” when Trump won the nomination and, ultimately, the presidency, but that’s a topic for another story.

Many people did not want to vote for Trump in the primary or general elections. He was an unknown quantity, seeing as he’d never served in government. He was your classic New York City narcissistic, bombastic, misogynistic, loud-mouthed lout. That turned off a lot of people. Many of my friends, associates, and acquaintances said they were going to vote for a third-party candidate in the general election rather than Trump. My efforts to dissuade them from doing so became the motivation for writing my letter to the editor.

While I agreed with my friends about Trump’s questionable personality and his lack of a “track record” in government service, I told them that they must go with the odds. As I’d noted in my letter to the editor, never in the history of this nation has a third-party candidate won the presidency. As such, a third-party candidate had a zero percent chance of winning, and voting for one essentially casts a vote for the party you most despise. I gave Trump 50/50 odds that he’d either screw things up or do a great job, but I gave Hillary nearly 100% odds of destroying this nation. As such, I knew that I had to vote for Trump.

Scroll forward four years to the end of Trump’s first term in office, and I think most individuals who can think clearly, critically, rationally, and unemotionally would agree that Trump did an outstanding job as president. Mark Alexander provided a comprehensive summary of Trump’s accomplishments during his first term. If you were to print this out, it would be 26 pages long, and, as such, most “low-information voters” won’t take the time to read it. I’ve challenged my friends, associates and acquaintances to read it and to point to any “fake news” or anything they wouldn’t like to see again during the next four years. To date, no one has done so.

Our nation is on a cusp. The results of this year’s election will determine if we continue our downward spiral into ever greater socialism and, ultimately, Marxism. It will determine if we allow leftists to continue chipping away at our Constitution, which they’ve been doing for over a century since the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. Upon exiting the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a bystander, “What have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” to which he responded, “A Republic … if you can keep it.” We are on the verge of losing our Republic.

The election this year is not so much about Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris. It is, as was so eloquently stated by General B.B. Bell, U.S. Army (Retired), in his open letter to American voters, about the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is about the rights of individual Americans, and the Left has been working ceaselessly and tirelessly to erode if not flat-out eliminate those rights. As General Bell says in his letter:

A vote for Trump is a vote for your Bill of Rights and your personal freedoms. So, it’s a vote for our personal and immutable God-given human rights. A vote for Harris is a strong vote against the Bill of Rights and a vote for the governmental principles articulated by Karl Marx. It’s a vote for federal government control of what rights, if any, citizens will be afforded by the government. Under Marxist regimes worldwide, historically, these rights and personal freedoms have been few, very few. This reality is stunningly clear.

As you go to the polls this election “season,” ask yourself if you love your country and the Constitution upon which it was built more than you hate Donald J. Trump. If the answer is “yes,” then you must vote for Trump. If you vote for anyone else, you will ultimately be voting for “Satan.” The wounds that will be inflicted on our Constitution and nation by a Democrat-led government over the next four (and potentially eight) years will likely be mortal.

My fear is that the ultimate outcome will be revolt. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in our Declaration of Independence:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [i.e., the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Shortly after these words were written, our nation’s citizens were at war with their brothers. The Left is taking away our unalienable rights, and we the people will ultimately reach a point wherein the “long train of abuses and usurpations” becomes unbearable. A vote for Trump will hopefully swing the pendulum back, at least for a while. In the famous words of then-Governor Ronald Reagan at his inaugural address in 1967:

Freedom is a fragile thing, and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. And those in world history who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.

In 1776, Patriot Peter Muhlenberg declared: “There is a time for all things, a time to preach and a time to pray, but those times have passed away. There is a time to fight, and that time has now come.”

The time to fight … the time for defending our rights and our liberties is now!