We face a stark choice this presidential election. One choice leads to more war, fewer freedoms and fewer opportunity for middle-class America. The other choice leads to peace, prosperity and the restoration of our country’s promise, led by John Kerry. But who is the man who would be president?

As a young man, Kerry served in Vietnam and came to see the horror of what that war was doing to the soul of this country. Upon returning, he spoke truth to power and fought to end the war, saying to Congress, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” As a veteran, Kerry has an intimate grasp of the realities of war and is unlikely to use our soldiers as pieces in a geopolitical chess game, as President George W. Bush has done in Iraq.

As a maverick freshman senator, Kerry fearlessly took on the Reagan administration when he investigated drug trafficking links between Columbian cartels and the right-wing Contras, who we were supporting in Nicaragua’s civil war. Kerry fought narco-terrorism and government corruption with the same tenacity that he had displayed as a prosecutor.

Far from the military-crippling elitist that his opponents portray him as, Kerry has voted to give the Pentagon everything it wanted 16 out of 19 times; many of the weapons programs he recommended cutting were put on the chopping block by the first President Bush in his 1992 State of the Union Address, with then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney’s wholehearted agreement.

Kerry’s domestic policies are also superior. His tax plan would put more money into the hands of the poor and middle class than Bush’s tax cuts. He would re-focus security efforts to screen our sea ports and airports more thoroughly and he would reverse the president’s disastrous environmental policy.

But this election is about more than two men and their stances on any one issue. It’s about what kind of country we want to be. America has moved steadily, if sometimes shakily, toward realizing the ideals enshrined in our national documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We continue to struggle for civil rights, equality and justice and move ever closer to true equality and freedom.

But the public fear generated by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 threatens to blind us to the possibilities of our nation as we surrender hard-won liberties in order to “feel safe.” Are we to be the cosmopolitan republic that our Founding Fathers struggled for, working together with the nations of the world – or a hated empire that pre-emptively lashes out in fear, striding the globe in search of monsters to destroy?

America is strong enough to dominate the world, or to lead it. That is the choice that faces us this election. Ultimately, our choice is one between progress or regression, between idealism and cynicism, between hope and fear. Resist the relentless fearmongering of the president and let your vote be guided instead by what Lincoln called “the angels of our better nature.” Vote John Kerry for president.

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.