OK KINDER, YOU TURKEY! JUST EXACTLY WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

A Speak Out caller published today says, "I would like to see Peter Kinder write a column saying what he would do to solve some of the problems." Fair enough. Here goes. In no special order ...

I would recognize that we have a deficit today, not because we're undertaxed, but because government spends far too much ($1.5 trillion today, versus $800 billion in 1980. Was that the Dark Ages?). I would cut spending first, and for that matter, second and third. I would put government on a diet, instead of the pocketbooks of middle class taxpayers.

I would slash the capital gains tax sharply (setting off a boom) and eliminate it entirely in the inner city. And I'd index this cruel tax on dreams for inflation, so that government no longer profited from the inflation it creates and no longer confiscated illusory (read: wholly inflationary) gains.

I would reverse Clinton's policy of preaching "sacrifice" for Americans, and instead fight for "sacrifice" from the government. I would shrink the government and expand the private sector, not as Clinton's policies are doing shrink the job-creating private sector and expand government.

There would be no new energy tax of any kind, including the higher gas tax now in the President's proposal. I would ease the federal tax code's crushing burden on families by moving to hike the dependent tax exemption to its equivalent, in 1950 dollars of something like $6,000 (or as high as I could get).

I would cheerfully seek out opportunities for combat and conflict with a corrupt Congressional majority especially in the House of Representatives which has languished under one-party control since the year I was born. For the sake of clarity, I would draw the starkest possible contrast with the career politicians who are ruining this country.

I would heed the anguished cries of residents trapped in our inner cities. This I would do by establishing enterprize zones to attract businesses to our depressed inner cities. I would encourage the privatization of government services. I would seek to empower parents not bureaucrats by fighting for full parental choice for their children's schools. Perhaps most important, I would return to the first purpose of government: crime prevention and law enforcement, the protection of the lives, safety and property of our people. I would seek at every turn to even the score between criminals and their victims, between our predatory classes and law-abiding Americans.

I would recognize that we are in a cultural war declared not by conservatives but by radical liberals who hate America and who demand taxpayer funding for their hate-filled expressions. I would not only refuse to fund vicious violations of democratic civility such as "Piss Christ", but would attempt to close entirely the National Endowment for the Arts, there being no constitutional justification for it. I would halt the flow of federal funds toward any college or university that refused to punish the liberal Brownshirt vandals who routinely destroy entire editions of alternative newspapers they deplore.

I would stop the endless Clinton chatter about how government can "invest" in emerging new technologies of the future leaving it to the private sector to make those decisions, disciplined by the cost-cutting magic of the marketplace.

I would reject the notion that a bunch of "experts" convened in secret by Hillary Clinton can seize the 14 percent of our GNP that is our health care delivery system, and run it better than free Americans making their own decisions. I would establish medical IRA accounts for all Americans, to encourage prevention and empower us all to make our own decisions on health care.

I would replace the environmental fanaticism of Vice President "Owl" Gore with a sensible, common sense, conservation-oriented approach to environmental issues. This approach would emphasize the crucial importance of private property rights as the surest guarantee of progress, both environmentally and economically. Recognizing that people have rights too, I would balance the runaway Endangered Species Act with an Endangered Jobs Act.

I would seek to halt the litigation explosion, affirming that we need to sue each other less and care for each other more.

In place of Clinton's blatantly quota-driven personnel selection, I would abolish affirmative action and hire strictly on merit, thereby returning to the original, revolutionary American ideal: that it doesn't matter who your father was. There would be no affirmative action for militant lesbians, or for anyone else who declares war on the Boy Scouts for the offense of affirming God and discriminating against sodomites.

I would not appoint, as Clinton has, a radical liberal surgeon general who insists on condoms in the classroom and abortion on demand throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy, whose further demand is that all taxpayers pay the abortionist. I would work to encourage and support the ordinary folk who rose up against and terminated the career of New York School Superintentent Joe "Heather Has Two Mommies" Fernandez.

I would heed the Joint Chiefs of Staff not the militant homosexual lobby and retain the ban on open homosexuality in the armed forces.

I would have hit Saddam Hussein with at least ten times the 23 cruise missiles President Clinton launched on June 26th. Further, I would have ordered that intelligence compound destroyed during the daylight hours not past midnight, when the high command is absent and the principal casualties are innocent janitors.

I would seek to abolish the federal department of education, and maybe a few other departments while we're at it.

I would seek out as judicial appointees those who understand the proper role of judges: to interpret, not make, our law.

I would cut marginal income tax rates and restore Americans to the status of majority shareholders in their own incomes. I would trust in freedom, encourage dreams and get the government out of the way of entrepreneurs.

In short, I would repair to the impregnable fortress of Reaganism. You may remember Mr. Reagan. He was the first President in 152 years to see his sitting Vice President elected to succeed him, the first President since Eisenhower to leave after completing two terms (both successful), more popular than when he took office, having transformed the American political landscape, the contempt of media and academic elites most especially notwithstanding.