[BlueTrain]

Personally, I think it works pretty well myself and certainly better than what we had before (not that I had first hand experience). The constitution isn't exactly a contract between the states and the federal government so much as it is a charter, if you will, that establishes the form of the federal government. Lots of countries have federal countries, like Mexico, Germany and Switzerland. They only became noteworthy, for want of a better word, when the nation was recongized as being greater than the sum of the separate states. Of course, not everyone sees it that way.

Frankly, however, countries that don't have a federal system don't seem to be any worse than the ones that do. The Confederacy was of course a federal system in which the states seems to have more importance than the nation itself, or so some thought. One even threatened to succeed!

In union there is strength. But there remains the problem of the 2nd admendment (as well as all the rest, plus the basic constituation). Some folks even think the first part of the 2nd admendment contradicts the second part. It is amusing to me how so many of those who hold the 2nd admendment so high want the federal government out of the state's affairs, and their own, while they're at it.