Bob Myers has figured me out. I am just a clown writing diatribes and should be put in jail.

Actually, Bob, that letter was supposed to be a bit humorous, though our country’s problems are not. What you did not offer is a solution of your own to any of the major crises facing us.

I don’t want to start a bloody revolution and hang liberals from lamp posts. But I do believe protests, organized civil disobedience, boycotts, and strikes could be effectively used to force our government to return to the constitutional limits which have defined its role in our lives for over 200 years.

After all, imposing extra-constitutional taxes, regulations, and mandates upon the electorate is very illegal, if not treasonous, even if the Constitution has not been enforced very well for the last 80 years.

I don’t know about your politics, career, family status, or income bracket. So I don’t know why you wrote what you did. I am in my 40s, consider myself libertarian leaning, have a wife and three children, have a graduate degree, and until recently, when my industry was decimated by the lending bubble, I had a fairly high income.

I am also scared to death of the situation in which I find my family and country. There are absolutely critical problems facing our country.

So there is reason to be mad as hell and to effect change if I can. If you, Bob, see no reason to resolve these problems then you must either be a fool, complacent, or a card-carrying socialist. Again, what would you do to solve these problems?

Below is a brief list of my radical, right-wing solutions to what ills America:

• Adopt the Fair Tax, a sales tax instead of other federal taxes. It encourages savings and penalizes excessive spending. Also, it does not hurt the poor, and it reduces tax compliance costs by hundreds of billions of dollars. Because the Fair Tax would raise personal savings rates, encourage people to spend less, and take the tax burden off of exports. It would be a pretty virtuous taxation method.

• Apply a strict constructionist constitutional test to all government programs. Use the 18th century definition of the words for interpretation purposes. If it is not a role for government spelled out in the Constitution or its amendments, then it should not be allowed, period. Welfare, Social Security, Medicare, WIC, farm subsidies, corporate welfare, etc., are not “general welfare”; they are individual welfare.

Why is this not clear? If you and others want to change our form of government to socialism, then you must amend the Constitution first.

• Pass a balanced budget amendment that allows deficits to fight wars only. Allowing deficits for social engineering, fiscal stimulus, etc., is too dangerous and prone to corruption. If the government can be brought back within its Constitutional limits, it should not be that hard to avoid deficits.

• Restrict voting rights to productive citizens who have passed a knowledge test on the Constitution. Voting ought to be restricted to people between the age of 18 and 65 who are not using any sort of government assistance and who can show an understanding of our system of government, how the constitution restricts the role of government, and the dangers of other forms of government.

People need to understand that we are a constitutional limited republic, not a democracy. The majority may only rule over a minority in specific ways as specified by the Constitution and its amendments.

The courts must use strict construction guidelines to rule on constitutionality to ensure that the amendment process is the only way to change our form of government. Legislation from the bench must end.

• Get our military out of the Middle East. We cannot afford to spend another trillion dollars on problems like terrorism. Remember we are nearly broke as a nation. Go after the terrorists; but use the CIA, cruise missiles, or Special Forces. Fight terrorism with terrorism if necessary. Don’t send hundreds of thousands of regular soldiers at great expense in life and money to be targets for the terrorists.

• Stop illegal immigration ASAP. Build a wall, patrol the coasts, hunt down the illegal people who are here and send them home. Use the army if necessary. There are billions of desperately poor people in the world who would like to come here. We can’t be the pressure relief valve for third world over-population anymore.

Most countries limit immigration to those with desirable skills or assets to invest. We no longer need millions of unskilled laborers; we need engineers, doctors, scientists, and millionaire entrepreneurs.

Let’s drain the rest of the world of its brains, not its surplus population. If our economy needs unskilled labor, then start a guest worker program to let workers come in for a limited time to work but with no route to citizenship.

• The world is overcrowded, and population growth is accelerating. In our own country we should take away tax incentives for having more than a couple of kids. Internationally, we should send birth control with the food parcels to countries that are in trouble. This may seem heartless, but not compared to the inhumanity and suffering that will be commonplace in the grossly over-populated world of the near future.

• Stop cap and trade. We need to invest in and perfect the technology of a clean and renewable energy source before we try switching over to it. Cap and trade puts the cart before the horse, and it will hamstring the economy with energy taxes.

• Free trade must be balanced trade. We can’t keep borrowing hundreds of billions each year to finance our appetite for inexpensive Asian imports. Our capital and factories are flowing to Asia.

Strategically, what will happen in a few decades if all the factories are gone and the people who know how to manufacture have retired? We will be horribly dependent on imports. What if they cut us off from our supplies or, even worse, go to war with us? How will we defend ourselves without a manufacturing base?

We need to use tariffs to remove the huge labor cost and environmental cost advantage enjoyed by countries like China. When we import their goods, we import their unemployment and poverty. Let’s return to a higher level of self-reliance and balanced trade.

• End the subsidy society; everyone must pay their own way. If you can’t or won’t, then tough luck. Maybe we can give you some food and an army cot. Subsidizing a lower middle class lifestyle for a growing number of people is bankrupting the government. It breeds mediocrity and incompetence as well as destroys ambition.

• Last but not least. Unravel this net of bureaucracy that we live in today. Nothing get done in this country without it first being studied to death by multiple layers of government. Even in Fayette County, we can’t build a road without spending half a million dollars on over-engineering and impact studies. It took 30 years to get Lake Macintosh started. We used to be a can-do people. We got things built in record time and under budget.

If you want a strong economy and plentiful jobs, get the government out of the way. Let’s learn to work on a shoestring budget again.

These are a few of my solutions, Bob. They may not be perfect or they may be too tough and radical for your taste. But I think they deserve consideration. I also still believe that civil disobedience and organized peaceful resistance such as strikes and tax boycotts are legitimate tools to force change.

What are your solutions, Bob?

Bill Gilmer

Fayetteville, Ga.