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
Each State is its People. There is no other candidate in sight for the People. You know perfectly well what I am saying and you understand it. You are simply refusing to accept the truth of what I'm telling you, because so to do impeaches the Unionist propaganda and casus belli, and it furthermore makes Lincoln a mass murderer, for having started an internecine civil war.
And actually, you wouldn't leave it to "the people of the United States". Knowing full well that unity in a community so broad as a mass polity is well-nigh impossible to attain, as Webster knew when he proposed his mischief and Lincoln knew when he followed Webster (both of them being aware of the North's gains in population vis-a-vis the South), you are intent on playing the lumpen majoritarian game on this proto-vanguardist principle, the old Federalist one, that, the People being divided in most things, you can do pretty much what you want if only you have control of the levers of federal power. Which is why, as Madison explained in Federalist 39 quoted above, the Framers, Hamilton excepted, would have no truck with a fully nationalized, centralized, amalgamated State and People.
Your impulse is therefore just the opposite of what you claim it is: you are an anti-populist, and you have made yourself the enemy of the People by trying to tie their expression of their will in knots and suppress it, just as Webster wanted to do in his day. Webster wanted the Federal Government as a vehicle for imposing his views on the South, and so did Lincoln, and so do you. That is a regionalist, factional political agenda most of the old Federalists, and all of the Antifederalists or Democratic Republicans, would have abhorred.
The Constitution simply doesn't support you, that's all, and you can't reword it or Goreify it to make it do your bidding.
I liked the rest of your response a lot -- misdirection, and nonresponsiveness, all wrapped around a quote from George Washington, which is responsive, and one from John Marshall, which is nonresponsive (I didn't address Marshall and neither did you), and in any case is unsupportive of your argument. Excellent.
Let's review.
I said,
[Quoting you]
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.
And you reply by quoting Washington agreeing with Hamilton, talking precisely about a lumpen People, which is exactly what the People are not, as I showed above by quoting Madison in the Federalist, refuting to elenchus your claim of support from Madison. Washington was simply wrong. Whatever he thought the People had ratified, they did not ratify a dissolution of their own identities as the Peoples of the States.
You claim that I stand alone against the Framers of the Constitution. That is a lie. I stand with them, against you and your propagandist friends.
Now let's look at your Marshall quote, from McCullough vs. Maryland 1819, and supply the part of the first paragraph which you omitted. The omitted lines are important to understanding Marshall's argument:
In discussing this question, the counsel for the State of Maryland have deemed it of some importance, in the construction of the Constitution, to consider that instrument not as emanating from the people, but as the act of sovereign and independent States. 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. [Emphasis added.]
The point here is that the State of Maryland tried to introduce the idea that the State sovereignty and the People were two separate entities, and that the state governments could, in the name of that sovereignty, claim some authority not granted by the People in convention assembled, over the authority conveyed to the Union by the Supremacy Clause. Maryland was wrong, and Marshall is correcting the error.
But it is incorrect to say that the People are not the People of the States.
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. [Emphasis added.]
Marshall is putting down the idea that state governments retain a residue of ultimate sovereignty, rather than the People of the state. The Maryland lawyers were trying to justify an act of the Maryland legislature and dress it up in the sovereignty of the State, when in fact it was an ordinary municipal law whose application, by the previous grant of the People, was restricted by the Supremacy Clause -- as long as Maryland remained in the Union.
Maryland's lawyers tried to put lipstick on a pig, and Marshall wiped it off. But he didn't attack the fundamental and ultimate sovereignty of the People, or deny that the People of a State are the State, and that a State is its People, but only the Maryland lawyers' contention that state governments could act as the People.
As a corollary issue, the Maryland lawyers were also incorporating nullification doctrine into their argument, which, as some Southerners have quoted to you, even Jefferson Davis repudiated in his inaugural speech as provisional president of the Confederacy.