@Wolf480pl @waifu @kurisu @pea @karen @quad Re: confederation there is also the Helvetican Confederation, which is also quite clearly a nation-state of a federation these days, even though it in some ways stays less centralized than the US, e.g. IIUC your citizenship is tied to and granted by your canton and your national citizenship is only a transitive status of your belonging to your canton.

@Wolf480pl @waifu @kurisu @pea @karen @quad

> The states preceded the Union. The Declaration of Independence speaks of “free and independent states” that “have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.” The British acknowledged the independence not of a single blob, but of individual states, which they proceeded to list one by one. Article II of the Articles of Confederation says the states “retain their sovereignty, freedom, and independence”; they must have enjoyed that sovereignty in the past in order for them to “retain” it in 1781 when the Articles were officially adopted.

https://www.libertyclassroom.com/nullification/

Oh! Good thing I listened to my own recommendation, because I sure learned something. I've probably been mixing up Madison and Hamilton, because Gutzman says that Madison did hold centralist views before ratification, but by the time he was President, he had come to appreciate the position for limited, enumerated rights, and vetoed bills that went against it.

That explains why there was no obvious reference to Madison in the latest 12 months of TWS. I'll look for a Hamilton reference instead. But the show linked definitely brings up the "intended decentralization, de facto centralization" story, and it's a good episode.