The American Revolution has become a distant, forgotten dream. More than 200 years later, Americans are again being directed by one man and his followers.

According to the U.S. Constitution, the federal government cannot tell the states or the people how to spend our money. Yet, this is what it has come down to: the federal government’s position, viewed as radical by some, is that citizens are not fit to make their own decisions and must rely on the government’s help.

That is a lie.

As students, paying tuition is hard enough. Add increasing taxes, higher premiums for medical expenses and a borderline fascist government takeover and you’ve got a recipe for a crumbling United States, if not a great reality TV series… except this is real.

Dr. Daneen G. Peterson, a former university instructor and author who writes about constitutional interpretations, emphasizes that the United States is, by definition, a republic, not a democracy.

“The only entity that can take away the people’s freedom is their own government,” Peterson wrote in a 2006 speech, “either by being too weak to protect them from external threats or by becoming too powerful and taking over every aspect of life.”

The difference between a republic and a democracy is at the center of the debate of government control over the people.

The Democratic Party’s pending success at passing the “Obamacare” health bill does not reflect the American people’s judgment but rather, as journalist Ramesh Ponnuru of Time Magazine online wrote, the democrats’ numbers and determination.

The idea of health-care reform being newly shoved down our throats was to be expected. President Obama and his administration, with the swift demise of early ’90s “Clintoncare” in the backdrop, assume that Clinton’s reform didn’t work solely due to that administration’s tactics. But that’s not the truth.

Ponnuru, among other journalists, wrote: “The major difference is that this time [the administration] also want a ‘public option,’ an insurance program open to everyone and run by the government. Obamacare is Clintoncare with a little more liberalism.”

Ponnuru also noted that Obamacare, much like Clintoncare, has too many conflicting goals, some of which restrain the autonomy of states.

I don’t want to be over-dramatic, but you cannot hold a pillow over someone’s face and expect them to breathe. It’s the same with states and federal government. The feds can’t take complete control over something while still expecting the state to be able to operate for itself.

Keeping this in mind, here are a few things to look for with Obamacare.

— Government would force you to buy. Young, healthy people would be forced to pay more on premiums than they would on medical expenses – the same as forcing them to buy insurance. You want basic coverage that reflects your health status? With Obamacare promising to cover millions of people, you would be paying for others, too, including smokers whose second-hand smoke affect millions or adrenaline junkies who like to jump off things for the “rush.”

— Raise taxes … again. The President promises to cut down the cost of insurance while countering with an offer to insure more than 50 million uninsured people. The only way we could make insurance “affordable” to all is if taxes are raised again and again.

— Job depletion. Obama has promised to lower unemployment. This is another contradiction. Gracie-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, a research organization, explains that employers would be forced to pick up the premiums for some employees or pay a tax. This means employers would have to either cut employees or cut pay.

— Government competition. Government health care will eventually run all other insurance companies out of the business, making their government “option” the only one.

— Federal and state lines being crossed. In 2006, then-Massachusetts Gov. Mit Romney proposed a care plan. In an interview with Newsweek, Romney explained his “RomneyCare” and what he doesn’t like about federal reform: “What we don’t like is the intrusion of the federal government on the rights of states. We don’t like raising taxes.”

To achieve healthcare reform that Americans can be happy with, we shouldn’t go against our founding fathers, but honor the Constitution. The federal government needs to realize they are the ones that need us, not the other way around.