My point was that a common defense is provided for in Article I, Section 8 as a legitimate part of the central (federal) government.
The states most certainly could decide most matters locally, as the Constitution and the 10th Amendment mandates, without compromising the national defense.
Your assertion that a strict interpretation of the Constitution would allow an invasion of Nazis or communists is wrong, and is a scare tactic that holds no basis in reality.
Furthermore, the steady drift away from the Constitution highlighted in the article is causing our nation to more closey resemble the hightly centralized governments of the Nazis and the communists than the constitutional republic the Founders established.
Actually my assertion had nothing to do with a strict interpretation of the Constitution, which I support. It had to do with whether two or three or ten countries rather than the USA could have won WWII and the Cold War. I don't think they could have.
BTW, a strict interpretation of the Constitution does not deal with the legitimacy of seccession, because the Constitution does not deal with it. Another point the Lincoln haters ignore is that Lincoln did not attack to south. He promised to do nothing and urged them to reconsider. But he refused to surrender US bases in the South. The successionists then attacked Fort Sumter thus bringing the war on themselves. Lincoln's extra-Contstitutional action have to be seen in the light of an unprecedented war for the survival of the country.