Currently, if you were holding a convention for fans of the federal government they could all fit in the broom closet of your nearest Long John Silver's. At least that is how the polls bear out. Only about 1 in 3 Americans think President Bush is doing a good job, the rest think he's incompetent and the some of them think he is a war criminal, worse than Adolf Hitler, bent on world domination. Not that Congress is doing any better, only about 1 in 5 Americans thinks that the people who make the laws for this nation were actually worth their votes.

A lot of this has to do with partisanship, liberals and Democrats won't support a Republican president, and Republicans and conservatives won't support a Democratic congress. A lot of it has to do with the war in Iraq. The nutroots on the left are furious at the "betrayal" of the party they bought on Iraq. They demanded that congress force our immediate surrender, when that didn't happen the Moveon morons hit the roof.

Not that the Republicans are in any better shape. Their largest faction, the conservatives, have had it and are openly talking about a third party if the GOP nominee happens to be a certain former mayor of New York City, not that they're thrilled with the other candidates either. The conservatives are, once again, resorting to their favorite tactic: cutting off their nose to spite their face.

So all of this makes for a country where the government is not liked and is not trusted, many on the left believe(stupidly and treasonously) that the government was in on 9-11. Every election we all know someone who says "if (inser name here) wins I'm leaving the country." Some actually carry out their threats, but most just stick around for another four to eight years being an annoyance. Then there are those who think secession from the country is a solution. After the 2004 election there were those on the left who felt that the northeastern states, and the west coast states, should have seceded to form a European Socialist country in North America. They probably didn't realize one already exists, it's called Canada.

Not that the far right is immune from such idiotic thinking. There are those who believe that the government is secretly controlled by a small handful of people who are moving to world government and surrendering American independence. Seccessionist tedencies exist as well with a few people on the right talking about the inevitability of Hillary and Socialism, they think breaking away from the United States is the only chance of defending the freedoms they cherish. Now, admittedly, people who want to secede, both on the left and right, are a minority who are vastly outnumbered by Americans who believe that this is one nation indvisible.

So what's to be done? After all the federal government is so unpopular that if they were to announce that the sun rose in the east, the next morning a combination of conspiracy theorists, die hard Bush haters, and Ron Paul cultists, would be saying that it's just another lie and crime from Washington. So the best thing Washington can do is back off.

Americans shouldn't need, or shouldn't want, the federal government to be so active.The more they do the more they mess up. The government should remember that the government that governs least, governs best. If Vermont wants to be a socialist state with all the misery that entails, that's their business. They just shouldn't demand that the federal government force it on everyone else. If South Dakota wants to outlaw abortion they should have had the right to do so. So much of the polarizing culture battles could be defused if the federal government would just say to the states "you deal with it".

Federalism worked for a long time in this nation, and unless something demands the attention of the federal government they should ignore it. The tenth amendment was written into the constitution for a reason, it's time we started to use it again.