“Once one conceives of the United States as a full sovereign, with numerous powers inherent to sovereignty (how we wound up with printing press money, by they way), then one takes a different view.”
That kind of sounds like the US Constitution, as opposed to the confederacy that existed before the Constitution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation
I am inclined to view the “full sovereign” interpretation as a serious and dangerous misinterpretation of the Constitution. The whole premise of the instrument is a government of enumerated powers only (e.g., Art. I, section 8), with powers not enumerated to be retained by the States or the People (10th Amendment). In my mode of interpretation, arguments from the text beat arguments from history, and one could beef up the Articles of Confederation without supplying full and general sovereign authority.