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No, it doesn't. It says the collective "People," not individual states, have a right to separate the collective from another "destructive" foreign entity. It says "When... it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another..." It says "it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it [current form of government], and to institute new Government..." The Declaration of Independence was speaking of the unanimous colonies as "one people" in relation to "another," namely England. It was not speaking of, say, New York in relation to Virginia. It wasn't speaking of future generations splitting from the collective, it was speaking of "abolishing" the form of government and creating a new one. It was not abolishing the Union and creating a new one. Okay, you lost me. Where do you get that from? I withdrew that comment. I had an early-morning brain fart.

There was no "one people" when it came to the United States.

[the Constitution would be ratified by the people]"not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct independent States to which they respectively belong.." James Madison, the Federalist #39

"An entire consolidation of the States into one complete national sovereignty would imply an entire subordination of the parts; and whatever powers might remain in them, would be altogether dependent on the general will. But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, exclusively delegated to the United States. This exclusive delegation, or rather this alienation, of State sovereignty, would only exist in three cases: where the Constitution in express terms granted an exclusive authority to the Union; where it granted in one instance an authority to the Union, and in another prohibited the States from exercising the like authority; and where it granted an authority to the Union, to which a similar authority in the States would be absolutely and totally contradictory and repugnant." Alexander Hamilton, the Federalist #32

There was no "one people" when it came to the United States.

As Madison later wrote in the letter in my first post:

It is fortunate when disputed theories, can be decided by undisputed facts. And here the undisputed fact is, that the Constitution was made by the people, but as imbodied into the several states, who were parties to it and therefore made by the States in their highest authoritative capacity. They might, by the same authority & by the same process have converted the Confederacy into a mere league or treaty; or continued it with enlarged or abridged powers; or have imbodied the people of their respective States into one people, nation or sovereignty; or as they did by a mixed form make them one people, nation, or sovereignty, for certain purposes, and not so for others.

Also, the 10th amendment says:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The 10th amendment clearly separates the United States, the several States, and the People as distinctly separate entities.

-PJ

I find him quite intellectually curious and open-minded. He says he is an engineering student. Most of engineering folks are not typically interested in history or social studies; but he wants to learn, and seems to break information down the way an engineer looks at things: what are the hard elements, what are the moving parts, and what makes this thing work?

He still knows how to think despite being indoctrinated as to what to think in the government schools that he most likely attended.