A visitor recently sent me this:

While I’m disgusted by the polarity of our present choices, there are items listed on your site that seem extreme to me. However, lest I judge without knowledge, I thought I would ask about your party’s platform on the following listed items:

• Abolish the income tax. Get rid of the I.R.S. No national sales tax. No flat-rate tax. No VAT. (So how would road repair etc… happen? I’m actually a Flat-tax proponent)
• Get rid of Social Security. (How would this apply to those like me, who have already paid heavily into it, for most of our lives, when we hit 65?)
• End government involvement in health care (is this to say that, we will abandon all compassion for even the legitimately poor? Shall we simply leave them to suffer?)

I don't pretend to be the one with all the answers, but here's how I personally would respond:

We should follow the Constitution, which gives no authority to the federal government to build and maintain roads, operate a retirement system, or run a welfare state. The founding fathers gave the federal government authority to do only a few specific things, like national defense and coin money. The rest is left up to the states, localities, and individuals. So if the federal government stops doing everything unconstitutional, it won't need nearly as much revenue.

As for Social Security, we have to phase that out gradually. We've made promises to people, an implied contract, and we have to honor it. Yes, I do understand the nature of the Ponzi scheme, where profits to early investors are paid from the contributions of later investors. I also understand that the government has embezzled all the money from the Social Security trust fund to fuel their manic spending spree that buys the votes to keep them in office.

Nevertheless, we have to get out of the mess we're in. A good start would be to let young people opt out of the system. There are various ways to make up the difference in revenue, and we'll probably have to use all of them. For starters, we can eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars when we bring the troops home and stop trying to police the world. We can save another hundred billion dollars by ending the pointless War on Drugs. This list goes on and on. Also, we can sell leases to companies who want to drill for oil and natural gas, or mine coal or oil shale on federal land. This has the side-effects of creating jobs for Americans here in America, plus it reduces our dependence on foreign oil.

These are just some of my ideas. I invite others to share ideas in the Comments.