Four years ago, I went from focusing on representing 13 million Pennsylvanians and helping to lead 54 Republican senators to focusing on seven Santorums.

The voters of Pennsylvania had always given me what I had wanted, but in 2006 they gave me what I needed. At age 48, after four years in the House and 12 in the Senate, I needed to step back and be a better husband to my wife, Karen, and a better father to our six children.

These years have been a blessing. I have remained involved in public policy through my work at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and as a contributor on Fox News Channel, my column in The Philadelphia Inquirer and guest hosting Bill Bennett's radio program. I helped run a small tech company and have served on corporate boards. But it was the birth of our special-needs child, Isabella, coaching Little League baseball and having the world revolve around my family instead of around dad's job that have made this time so extraordinary.

So why, then, will I be in New Hampshire tomorrow?

For the same reason political novices are turning out in droves for Tea Party rallies across the United States. It's our shared sense that something extraordinary -- something alarming -- is happening to America.

Federal power has exploded, along with the federal debt. President Obama has opened his arms to our sworn enemies and given the back of the hand to our closest allies. He has bowed before despots while unilaterally weakening U.S. defenses. He has shown disdain for the most innocent by mandating insurance coverage for abortion, funding embryonic stem-cell research and passing a government-run health care regime that will eventually ration care for less "useful lives."

The President has waged an ideological assault on democratic capitalism in favor of European socialism, using every dirty trick in the book to get his programs passed while unemployment rates soared and the public pleaded with him to stop. And he shows no sign of slowing down the onslaught. Like the health care bill, his financial services "reform" reflects a belief in government control over refereed market competition that ignores the role government regulation had in creating the problem. And next up is a partisan immigration bill aimed not at passage, but at cynically trying to further turn Hispanic voters against Republicans.

Then there's the President's global warming bill. It will not only economically devastate the already hurting coal-producing and coal-burning states, but also drive more manufacturing jobs offshore.

To pay for all of this government control, D.C. Democrats have already passed new "fines" and industry-specific taxes and increased existing taxes. Now some are calling for a European-style value-added tax.

So, like many Americans, I could not simply sit by and watch the carnage.

America is not predestined for eternal greatness. Every generation has to fight forces at home and abroad that want to destroy not just what America is, but what it has always strived to be -- that shining city on a hill that believes in the power of a free and virtuous people to take care of themselves and their neighbors; in a limited federal government with most rights residing with the states and the people; that those rights come from our Creator; and that the role of government is to protect those rights, not create and impose unnatural rights that pit those granted them against those who are forced to sacrifice their money, time or even their lives at the expense of someone else's new right.

My grandfather, like the vast majority of immigrants to this country, came to America because of what America stood for: freedom, opportunity and individual responsibility. He brought his family to a company town in Pennsylvania to work in a coal mine in order to provide for them. He didn't expect or want an omnipresent government to take care of him and his family. Heck, that's why he left Mussolini's fascist Italy.

President Obama is working to transform America into something we have never been and never aspired to be.

I have no doubt history will show that our next election will be a turning point for America. I am coming here as part my effort to do all I can do to convince voters in America and New Hampshire to elect conservatives to Congress to stop the Beltway Democrats from doing even more harm.

"Live free or die" is more than a great state motto. It has always been at the heart of the American experiment, and never more so than today.

Rick Santorum is a former Republican senator from Pennsylvania and is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.