The military is one of the few Constitutionally mandated federal duties.
I'm not objecting to that. But we've noticed a certain drift in power from state/local governments to the center since 1789. I am arguing that the drift in power is structural, not cyclical.
To be precise, I am arguing that the Constitution is actually flawed in its balance of powers because the balance is not inherently stable. It does not describe a real "balance", merely an initial state. Imagine, if you will, a see-saw perfectly level, with a fat kid on one end and a skinny kid on the other. We know where things will end up.
And if you look back over the course of history, making a straight line from 2012 to 1789, was there ever a time when states and localities reclaimed some power from the federal government? Was there some great wave in one year or other when the tide turned and all of a sudden, states started to actually get more power? Rather, the absence of any events like this is pretty striking.