Both these candidates want to nationalize health care, raise taxes to deal with our Social Security and Medicare crises, and onerously regulate the mortgage industry. Both condemned the Supreme Court's decision banning partial birth abortion. Both reject the only hope we have for addressing our education problems: school choice.

I appreciate your concern for how we are treating the 600 or so detainees we are holding in Guantanamo.

But have you thought about the 2.3 million of our own citizens -- 1 percent of our adult population -- in prison? Ten percent of black men between 20 and 34 are in prison or jail.

If millions of low-income Americans would hear a genuine and aggressive message from our leadership about how conservative and traditional values address their problems, they'd be less susceptible to destructive illusions peddled by those like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

While you spoke in Los Angeles, Social Security and Medicare trustees issued a report. These systems are bankrupt and in the red by more than $50 trillion -- several times our gross domestic product. This is more than a cash flow problem; this is a misuse of government crisis. Is this not a "transcendent threat?"

Our incidence of out-of-wedlock births -- almost 40 percent -- is 10 times greater than 50 years ago. Do you see breakdown of the American family as a "transcendent threat?"

How can we light the path to freedom for others when we are so clearly losing the way ourselves? I think the "transcendent threat" is the dimming of that light from the city on the hill.

I hope you can still listen, John.

Your fellow conservative,

Star