No, I didn't mean "gave up" at all. Delegated is exactly the right word, used by the Framers. You got a beef, take it up with them.
You're just power-mad, and dream of a federal juggernaut that will take you anywhere over acres of cooling bodies, like one of George Lucas's armed "walkers". Your problem, not mine. I know what's in the Constitution, and I know what you and some dishonest lawyers have read into it from time to time.
Any of the things that you listed in your tirade, the States can do. All they need do is abolish the present Republic, or withdraw from it, and cast their affairs anew. With the People, you can do anything -- and most importantly, we don't have to ask for permission from you or your favorite politicians and land sharks.
Everyone, except people like Washington and Madison and Lincoln. I'll go with them over you.
Yeah? Quote them. (Oh, wait -- that's a "homework assignment"! LOL!)
What you can't stomach, is that I won't buy your lumpenproletariat definition of the People, which was a political fairy tale expressly whipped up by Webster to deny the People of a State their rights. Webster lied, Lincoln lied, and you lie.
The Philadelphia Convention considered your Websterite formula of a mass People considering the Constitution in a mass convention -- for about two minutes. It couldn't even get a second. The motion failed because the idea was rejected.
Your and Lincoln's theory of the People is bogus, counterfeit, false -- a political lie.
Webster didn't need to spin the concept of a unitary nation-state in lieu of a federal republic, in order to show that South Carolina's and Calhoun's theory of nullification was unsupportable for any State remaining in the Union, because it was directly contradicted by the stipulations of the Supremacy Clause.
No, I'd leave it to the people of the United States, you prefer some sort of all powerful, mythical 'states' screwing everyone in sight.
Yeah? Quote them.
"The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.
For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations." -- George Washington, 1796
"The powers of the General Government, it has been said, are delegated by the States, who alone are truly sovereign, and must be exercised in subordination to the States, who alone possess supreme dominion. It would be difficult to sustain this proposition. The convention which framed the Constitution was indeed elected by the State legislatures. But the instrument, when it came from their hands, was a mere proposal, without obligation or pretensions to it. It was reported to the then existing Congress of the United States with a request that it might be submitted to a convention of delegates, chosen in each State by the people thereof, under the recommendation of its legislature, for their assent and ratification.
This mode of proceeding was adopted, and by the convention, by Congress, and by the State legislatures, the instrument was submitted to the people. They acted upon it in the only manner in which they can act safely, effectively and wisely, on such a subject -- by assembling in convention. It is true, they assembled in their several States -- and where else should they have assembled? No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States, and of compounding the American people into one common mass. Of consequence, when they act, they act in their States. But the measures they adopt do not, on that account, cease to be the measures of the people themselves, or become the measures of the State governments." -- John Marshall, 1819