It is now apparent that Donald J. Trump will be the nominee for the Republican Party and the “establishment” Republicans are scared silly. But it is not only the Republican that are running scared; the Democrats are as well. For this election, unlike any other I have seen in my lifetime, has made the American public aware of just how out of date the selection process is and how corrupt it is with regard to the vote of the general population.

As a youngster growing up, I was taught that in a democratic republic that our vote does count in selecting who our next president will be. In fact, Norman Rockwell did a series of paintings in the early 1950s depicting this very essence of who we are as a people, and it was titled "Freedoms." Unfortunately, much to our disappointment, we have found out that the party makes the decision on who we elect as our candidate through a delegate process, which is approximately 160 years old.

This disclosure was brought out by Trump and by Bernie Sanders, two people who represent two different points of view and two different party associations. A candidate may win the popular vote and still lose on the delegate count and when you throw in super delegates such as the Democratic Party has, the whole system is corrupt with regards to what we were taught in high school about “democracy.”

We have allowed for over five decades a system of government that our Founding Fathers did not have in mind — run by the professional politician — and it has led us to the point we are today in history.

It is said politics is “the art of compromise,” and perhaps that is why we are in the dire straits we are today as a nation. For we have compromised on our national security, we have compromised on our educational system, we have compromised on our foreign policy, we have compromised on our immigration policy and we have certainly compromised on our trade policy.

This upcoming election I believe will mark a turning point in our history and will have a dire effect on generations yet to come. For we will either become a nation of socialistic thought and have a number of freedoms we enjoy today taken away from us and become, in some respects, a version of the United States of Europe instead of the United States of America. Or we can stand up and proclaim to the world, “We are fed up and not going to take it anymore” and start back down that long hard road to an independent thinking people.

Can we become a nation where ideas are discussed out in public and nobody’s point of view is suppressed? A nation where micro-aggression and safe space on a college campus is a joke? A nation where professors in colleges and universities allow their students to express their own opinions and not be pigeon-holed into a single ideology? A nation where “Under God and In God We Trust” have true meaning to who we are as a nation and as a people?

There are two things in this life that cost us nothing. It did not cost you and me any price to be born and it will not cost you and me anything to die. But everything in between has a price and “freedom” is not free; it costs each and every one of us to be ever vigilant about those “freedoms” we take for granted. For if we ignore that concept and allow those “freedoms” to be taken away, then we become a nation of sheep being led to slaughter.

Jim Garvey is a resident of Kalispell.