The U.S. Government Must Go! http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff348.html

A chorus of U.S. and international officials keeps chanting that "Gaddafi must go" because, they keep repeating, he has lost legitimacy. Let’s turn the tables. How legitimate is the U.S. government? I’m not talking about the popularity of particular persons like Obama, Bush I, Bush II, or Clinton. Changing faces, political parties, and administrations in Washington is a lost cause. I’m talking about national government itself. Should Washington be dismantled? Has Washington lost legitimacy as a government? If so, as a remedy, as a guide to action, as an objective to work toward, the U.S. government must go!Let’s look first at the polls with the longest histories. The Pew Research Center poll dates from January 1997. The very first poll found that 58% of the people were dissatisfied with the way things were going.

Today, that reads 73%. The average over all of its 85 polls for the percent satisfied is 34.35%, for those dissatisfied is 59.12%, and for those unsure is 6.49%. (These do not add to 100% precisely due to rounding error.) This high level of dissatisfaction is not due to a few outliers. Americans are consistently dissatisfied in poll after poll.The NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll goes back to early December of 1995. This has four possible answers: satisfied, dissatisfied, mixed, and unsure. Over its 122 polls, the averages are 37.06%, 48.98%, 10.86%, and 3.09%. These results are like those in the Pew poll. The satisfied contingent is in the 34-37% range.

The Gallup Poll goes back to 1994. There are 179 polls. Those satisfied with the way things are going average 39.78%. The dissatisfied average 57.70%. There are numerous other polls with shorter track records. They show the same thing. For example, in the Time Poll of August, 2010, 57% said the country was on the wrong track and 34% said it was on the right track. From 2004 to the present, the satisfied number got to 51% once. That was its maximum. The rest of the time it stayed between 28% and 46%. The CBS News Poll is another example of a poll that shows the same thing. Those who think the country is seriously off on the wrong track have ranged from 48% to 89% since 2006. The average is 66.4%.