Ralph Nader is doing it again. He has announced that he is running for the presidency, but this time as an independent candidate, and not the representative of the Green party.

The consumer advocate still firmly believes the Democratic party has lost its way and its ideals; that it has compromised too much with the Republican Congress, and that it has wrongly contributed to the passage of laws that help big business and harm American workers.

He still wants to prosecute corporate crime more aggressively, still wants fairer wages for workers, still wants to develop a more active, effective electorate—and is still the best man running for the office.

No matter what people say about him, he is still the only candidate who is not a professional politician, still the only one who addresses the real problems of American workers—other than Dennis Kucinich. But, the mainstream media deliberately ignores, or undervalues, Kucinich, who is a still the only professional retaining believability.

The governor of New Mexico says that Nader's announcement is an "act of total vanity and ego," and many democrats believe that Nader will cost their party the election, as they believe he cost them the last one. That's one side of the coin.

The other side claims that every ordinary citizen who clung to the Democratic party and voted for Mr. Gore, despite knowing it was the party of mediocrity and destructive compromise, deliberately relinquished their best opportunity to create the positive changes in law they wanted.

Americans on this back side of the coin believe it is those Americans who—by not voting for the man they knew would best represent them—gave the Republicans their long-awaited opportunity to destroy remaining New Deal programs.

There are many forces in life that influence a person's character, but there are three human traits over which an individual has complete control at all times regardless of these forces. They are dignity, integrity, and honesty.

I voted for Ralph Nader in the last election for I believed he possessed all of these characteristics. I did not compromise my dignity by voting for a man whom I thought just another mediocre, political opportunist. I did not compromise my integrity by voting merely to win an election, when I knew such a win would not produce the dynamics necessary to create positive change in government, and I did not compromise my honesty by voting for a candidate I didn't believe the best man for the job.

Here I am, four years later, facing the same dilemma: do I vote for the Democratic candidate for whom most democrats will cast their votes—giving the party an opportunity to win the election—or do I vote for the man whom I believe best for the job I want done?

This would be a true problem for me, if conditions were identical to those the country faced four years ago. But they are not, for the destructive forces unleashed by the Republican party during the past years have clearly revealed the uncaring greed fueling the party's engine.

Under the current Republican Administration the republic has been transformed from a nation with a large financial surplus to one possessing enormous debt, from a nation claiming to desire universal peace to one aggressively initiating war with other nations and killing thousands of innocent people, from a nation advocating environmental health to one allowing corporate polluters to write their own laws, from a nation advocating individual rights and justice to one imprisoning people merely upon suspicion, prosecuting them in secrecy, and strangely behaving like the Nazis of WWII,from a nation understanding the necessity of separation between state church and the danger of religious control of government to one to one that opened government's door wide and inviting religion in by shifting public funds and the responsibility of government's social programs to religious groups.

Above all, it has transformed a republic admired by most other people of Earth to one feared by all.

Because of these truths, and all the frightening conditions the Republican party has foisted upon the republic, I will reluctantly forego my dignity, integrity, and honesty and cast my vote for whichever candidate the Democratic party nominates, for it is more crucial to throw the Republicans out of the White House than it is to satisfy personal needs.