·         Blocking states from limiting abortions, unraveling current laws banning “partial birth” abortions, and generally reinforcing the “culture of death” that increasingly pervades our justice system.

·         Rejecting public acknowledgement of America’s religious heritage – including banning prayers from government ceremonies and the Ten Commandments from public buildings and monuments.

That’s only the beginning.  As Steven G. Calabresi, co-founder of The Federalist Society, recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal, over the next few years, the wrong judges on the right benches could easily establish “a federal constitutional right to welfare; a federal constitutional mandate of affirmative action wherever there are racial disparities, without regard to proof of discriminatory intent; a right for government-financed abortions through the third trimester of pregnancy” and on and on and on.

Truly, this will be a nation-shaping election.  The decisions made in hundreds of thousands of voting booths will decide not only countless state and local judgeships, but who sits in the Oval Office and appoints our federal judges.  And who will serve in the Senate that confirms those nominations.

A president holds the “bully pulpit,” and gives leadership to the nation’s defense and economic policies.  Congress creates the laws.  But it’s the judges who hold the president and those Congressmen – and the lobbyists, and the bureaucrats, and the voters – accountable.

Whether we like it or not, for now it’s the judges who decide what we can and can’t say, and where we can and can’t say it.  It’s the judges who ultimately determine how much authority the community exerts over individual liberty, and how much power any one person or group within that community exerts over all the rest.

It’s the judges who translate our Constitution…define our collective morality…shape what freedom looks like in America.

Choosing thoughtfully the people who will bear that responsibility – or the people who will invest that responsibility in others, on our behalf – is the most somber duty of every conscientious voter.

For if we make the wrong choices, the consequences will be haunting us long after the nightmares of this Halloween are forgotten.