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Is this the part of the discussion where you come up with some obscure and irrelevant argument regarding the Articles of Confederation? Maybe we can talk about whether the 16th Amendment got ratified while we are at it. Then we can fight about the fact that someone called the US a democracy instead of a republic. Whatever.

The Constitution is an agreement between the states creating a federal government and stating the rights and obligations of the states and the people with respect to each other and the federal government. The parties to the Constitution are the states. It is signed by the authorized representatives of the states, although there was some coercion of a couple of them, as I recall.

Whatever the relationship of the states was before the Constitution was clearly superceded by the Constitution.

When a party to an agreement fails to honor the obligations of that agreement, the other party or parties have the right to declare the agreement in breach and pursue the appropriate remedy. In a normal contract, that remedy is to sue for damages, or for specific performance. In the context of an agreement between sovereign states to form a confederacy and create a vehicle through which they can conduct a common defense, create a currency and regulate interstate commerce, when the compact is utterly breached, there is no longer an obligation to remain part of that confederacy.

When you form a partnership, and the partnership's rules are not followed, you can sue to dissolve the partnership. We can't do that with our national partnership, but we have the moral right to accomplish the same end result.

If we approach this with the mindset that we are the ones who want to follow the Constitution, and we have been forced to withdraw from the Federal government's jurisdiction by its refusal to follow the rules, we can maintain the legal, moral and political righteousness of our cause, and that will serve us well. It will be harder for opponents when we say that all we want to do is restore the Constitution. Their efforts to prevent that would be an exercise of raw power, not of legal right.

Lincoln won the election, and was following the rules, and the south didn't want to accept that. We lost this election, but we don't get to leave every time we lose an argument. We need to be clear that we must leave because the Constitution does not allow socialism, does not allow Federal intrusion into matters that are not enumerated, does not allow interference with the 2nd Amendment, does not permit the destruction of religious belief, does not require criminals to be set free or prevent them from being executed by hanging, and certainly does not permit 5 justices to amend it by fiat due to evolving standards of civility.

Frankly, it could have been done a long time ago, but there was always the hope that FDR's and LBJ's impositions on the Constitution could be reversed over time. Reagan gave us hope. Obama represents an indication that the hope of following the Constitution is slowly dying, unless we take matters into our own hands in places where people still care. The tipping point has been reached, and every day from here on out, we will grow weaker and fewer. We either begin to push back soon, or never.