[starbase]

didja ever wonder why the states were so eager to cede their sovereignty to the feral gummint?

To take a stab at this question of yours, I'd guess it had more to do with the desperate desire to survive combined with the recent experience of how ineffectual the Articles of Confederation were.

Think of their position, just fought a hard war with a major world power, relatively small country, surrounded by (understandably) hostile Indians, weak economy, weaker military. We haven't always had the luxury of our opponent's militaries being rounding errors in relation to ours.

I'll bet they were damn keen on getting something stable running 'yesterday'. And having just tried a Confederacy, they probably thought *total* states rights weren't all they were cracked up to be.

If those assumptions are correct, then I would say they made the right choice at the time.

[ForGod'sSake]

Good points also. I'm afraid I did a time jump on you without any warning. What I was referring to was the more recent past; more precisely the last 30 years or so. With my own eyes I've seen the states one by one relinquish their sovereign rights to the feral gummint. There are probably a combination of reasons for this happening.....again. In fact, it would appear from almost the beginning the states began to lose their constitutionally guaranteed powers to the fed. Some times they were given, other times taken. And only one major power struggle within our history---the civil war.

In any case, it just seems we and the states have given up their(and our) rights with little, if any, struggle and hardly a whimper.

FGS