By now you’ve heard the news: Democrats succeeded in passing the Senate version of health care “reform” late Sunday night. Some liberals cheered and declared the event “historic,” but polls indicate that the vast majority of Americans are unhappy with the outcome. A friend of mine somberly summed up the consequences of the vote: “We are all Europeans now.”

Are we? I don’t know. I hope not. But one thing is certain. America is at a crossroads. At this juncture, freedom-loving souls in America have only two choices.

Choice one: We can do nothing. We can throw in the towel, believing the war to be lost. But such a choice has consequences. Obamacare lays the groundwork to nationalize one-sixth of the American economy. More and more private decisions will come into the scope of what the government deems its own concern. If we allow this situation to stand, we will lose much of what has made America unique and successful. Slowly but surely, America will descend into socialism. Logically speaking, it is the only possible outcome.

Choice two: We can fight. We can rise up and take our country back. We can work to get this law repealed, in its entirety. It will be a long, hard road. In November, we will need record numbers of upsets in House and Senate races. But we know that American exceptionalism will be lost if our representatives in Washington do not believe in the Constitution—or in Americans themselves. The current congressional leadership trusts primarily in government institutions and mandates. But we know that individual effort, ingenuity, and perseverance can do far more. That has always been the American way.

Yes, bureaucracies are hard, almost impossible, to uncreate. The odds are against us. But, historically speaking, fighting—and winning—impossible battles is what Americans do best. We should now determine to follow in the steps of our founding generation.

In the late 1700s, the American colonists were saddled with an oppressive government. The original tea partiers were born, and their actions eventually sparked a revolution. The Americans were not supposed to win this war. The British army was bigger, better equipped, and better trained. The American army, by contrast, was a ragtag team of half-clothed, hungry men. Victory in the American Revolution, as George Washington once said, “was little short of a standing miracle.” He credited America’s success to the “singular interpositions of Providence” and the “unparalleled perseverance of the Armies of the U States, through almost every possible suffering and discouragement.”

We are not in a literal war right now, but we are in a civil war of ideas.

It was almost inevitable that we would end up here. Over time, Americans have been slowly and thoughtlessly drifting away from many of our core constitutional principles. Many have forgotten the federalist nature of our great country: States have the right to develop their own solutions on a whole host of policy matters. The federal government can’t deny this prerogative of state governments. The Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is simple: “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.”

In America, power defaults on the states and on individuals, not on the federal government. Our current congressional leadership has been acting on the opposite assumption. But the founders drafted the Tenth Amendment as they did because they knew that the best way to protect freedom is to leave political power close to home.

Indeed, the founders assumed that states would each develop different solutions on a wide range of matters. It is puzzling that modern American politicians work so hard to find one-size-fits-all federal solutions for virtually every issue confronting us. This insistence on forcing agreement on such a diverse citizenry has led to unnecessary ill will and division. In some cases, these federal mandates tread too far on state and individual rights and are even unconstitutional.

The problem is pervasive, impacting more than just health care. A few small examples: We don’t have to agree on prayer in schools. A strict reading of the Constitution neither prohibits nor requires the tradition. Federalism would allow public school systems in San Francisco and Plano to implement different policies on the matter, according to the will of their communities. Nor must we all agree on environmental issues. If California wants to bankrupt itself in attempts to stay green, the Constitution does not stop it from doing so. I suspect that we in Texas will retain our freedom to keep drilling for oil.

Similarly, Congress does not have the power to force one federal health care solution on this great, diverse country. Nor should it. Our country, our health, and—most importantly—our freedoms will suffer.

Americans are an entrepreneurial, innovative, hard-working people. We always have been. Obamacare is thus incompatible with our national character.  We must resist it and restore governance that is in line with our federalist Constitution.

Ronald Reagan once spoke about socialized medicine, noting that we must be on alert for any intrusion on our freedoms. Otherwise, he concluded, we will one day “awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don’t do this and if I don’t do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”

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