“Exactly counties owe their existence to states.”
And counties are populated by people, as mentioned in the Tenth Amendment.
“Therefore, they are subordinate.”
Does that mean the people of the county can’t secede, which as I recall is what this part of the discussion is about.
“In fact the federal government owes its existence to the states. If the states would only remember that!”
True enough.
To what do the States owe their existence?
Counties aren’t mentioned in the text of the 10th Amendment.
The people are and the people express themselves politically through the states. I’ll give you an example from my personal experience. Years ago my father was asked to serve on a commission to draw up a state constitutional amendment that would allow the reduction of the number of counties in WV. They would merge vote themselves out of exist4nce the state would direct it, I know longer remember the details. In WV it seemed like a very good idea we have way too many counties for our population - 1.4M currently. There were probably a third more people in that state when my father was asked to do this. The amendment was presented to the people of this state, and they voted it down. No change was the result. It’s much worse now, we have counties that can’t even come close to providing county services. The state picks up the tab. Ok the point! The state went to the people to ask to do this not to the counties. The people expressed their collective will to the state. The counties had no say!
The counties are thus just administrative units of the state approved by the people. They are not separate political entities. If the people at a locale asked for a county to be formed the state would ask the people as a whole through the legislature for the necessity of it. I don’t remember now if it would require a statewide referendum to give final permission or not. In both cases the counties are subordinate to the state and the people.