What's at issue is the idea that somehow we are free as citizens of a state and unfree as citizens of our country.
There doesn't seem to be much real-life warrant for such an assumption.
Many would legitimately argue that the checks and balances written into the Constitution give us more rights as US citizens than we would ever have as citizens of a state.
But some people are always looking for some perfect utopia and they find it, or put it, somewhere in the past.
It's that longing and not the historical facts that matter for them.
But anyway, if there were no citizens of the United States and you got into trouble overseas, you could have to wait a long time as Virginia, Maryland, and any other states you've lived in tried to figure out (or avoid figuring out) who had responsibility for you.
"Many would legitimately argue that the checks and balances written into the Constitution give us more rights as US citizens than we would ever have as citizens of a state."
Let them argue it. Let's see the federal bill of rights for federal citizens. You can provide a link. The checks and balances operate between states, state citizens, and the federal government and its branches. Without citizens of states, just mere residents, the balance has been removed. There is no state against which to enact unconstitutional legislation. Anything it enacts against federal citizen residents of states is allowable because that is how it was designed from the beginning.
"There doesn't seem to be much real-life warrant for such an assumption."
Do you have a better explanation for what would otherwise be unconstitutional activity? Let's hear them. Explain the attempts on guns, the paper currency, the odius IRS, the coming forced vaccines, the illegal immigration. All they have to do is keep the pressure on and wear us down until we tire. Their boldness has been inversely proportional to the number of de-jure state citizens. That number has gone to zero so their boldness has gone to infinity. Everything they want will come to be. They are not breaking any law by doing what they are doing. The devil is in the citizenship issue.
The federal government could always act as agent to resolve international problems with state citizens without having the citizen actually have to be a federal citizen. That is what the states created the federal government for, to do things like that.
Thanks again. Appreciated. Regards.