Fifteen years old. I am fifteen and I already hate the government. Thanks to my first-ever course in American government and some long-winded diatribes by my father, I now know about the evils of the government, and how it is constantly taking our Constitutional rights from us. For example, did you know that it's not really the people who elect the President, but a select group of 538 known as the Electoral College? This was actually written into the Constitution as a way to elect the President. Um, hello? Does this not sound right to anyone else here? I mean, the point of the Constitution was to guarantee us certain "inalienable rights," among which is the right to choose who we think is most fit to run our country. Therefore, the Electoral College is a direct infringement and contradiction of our first amendment rights.

Another thing I dislike intensely is the way political campaigns are run. Did you know that an organization known as the Federal Election Commission gives millions of dollars to candidates every Presidential election? How, pray tell, is this helping us overcome our current deficit problems? Not only that, but I hate the fact that candidates no longer try to make themselves look good: they just try to make their opponents look bad. For example, the Kennedy-Romney senatorial race in 1992 was nothing but one slander campaign after another. People are trying to get into office to improve their prestige, not to try to help the people who elected them.

There are many other things wrong with the government: did you know that political parties are not mentioned in the Constitution, and yet they are a huge part of lawmaking, and also a large part of the problems with this country's government? I, and many of my generation, am being increasingly turned off to politics. We have to pump money into Social Security to pay for our parents and grandparents, but the speculation is that there will be no money to take care of us when we need it. Like many other teenagers, I'm tired of hearing about the country's problems, and I just don't care anymore. If those people in Washington really want the votes of the next generation, they'd better take a long, hard look at the image that they're projecting to us future voters, and try to make some changes to ensure that we'll care at all when it comes time for us to make a difference. ?