This being an election year, each political party is making a choice about its presidential candidate. Come November, Americans will make choices not only about our next President, but also about every member of the House of Representatives and 34 members of the Senate. A choice for a new Supreme Court Justice all lies ahead as well. But none of these are the choices that should most command our attention.

Last week, Mitt Romney tried to widen our sense of the choices before us by referring to Ronald Reagan’s speech in 1964 nominating Barry Goldwater. Goldwater “saw two paths for America,” Romney said, “one that embraced conservative principles, dedicated to lifting people out of poverty and helping create opportunity for all. And the other, an oppressive government that would lead America down a darker, less free path.”

I was stunned when I heard that because that is not my sense at all of the choice before the nation in 1964.

1964 was not only the year Barry Goldwater lost the presidential election, it was also the year of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, a law approved by the Congress with bipartisan support that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Barry Goldwater was one Senator (one of only 6 Republicans) who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, saying that it was “a dire threat to the liberties of African Americans” that “will create in America the hallmarks of the police state.”

Goldwater was wrong in 1964. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 has worked to lift people out of poverty by outlawing segregation in public accommodations. It helped create equal opportunity for all, women and men; black and white; Muslim, Jew and Christian. Passage of the Civil Rights Act was not a partisan moment but a reaffirmation of our founding ideals. It was a rebirth of opportunity.

Those were momentous choices we made as a nation six decades ago. We have similar momentous choices to make today, choices that can recommit this Nation again to its best principles.

Will we truly be One Nation, or will we allow ourselves to be divided against one another? Will we permit race hatred and religious bigotry to brew conflict among us? Will we embrace the promise of the opening words of the Constitution that gather us as “We the People?”

Will we make good on the promise of liberty and justice for all? Will we affirm that Black lives truly matter, and that Muslims are as welcome everyone else to work and worship among us without fear or suspicion? Will we continue to be a world leader in jailing our own citizens?

Will we be a Republic, a government of the people, by the people and for the people, where every vote counts and everyone is truly encouraged to cast a vote? Or will we continue to allow dark money to flood our elections giving extra voice to the wealthy? Will we continue the slide into disenfranchising millions through gerrymandered districts and restrictive voting requirements?

Each week my son’s Boy Scout Troop says the pledge of allegiance, a short, powerful affirmation of what it means to be an American: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One Nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.”

Are these merely hollow words? That is the real choice before us. Will we live up to this promise?

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Douglas Bennett lives in Topsham.