I have been asking myself that for a long time. One reason is that the Federal take over of all things to all people is so complete that the thought of powerful state governors and legislatures is a foreign concept. Even though that was the original intent.
You well know that all FReepers agree the Federal government is today a totally out-of-control bloated monstrosity, bearing little resemblance to the minimalist Republic our Founders intended.
We don't agree that Abraham Lincoln is responsible for the current state of affairs.
We say, if you must pin the blame on somebody, then blame Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and the Solid South which solidly supported Democrat-progressivism for over 50 years -- until (yes, I remember it well) the presidential election of 1964.
“Personally I don’t understand how they can be so wrapped up by events that ended 150 years ago, but I accept that there are those who are.”
Because the wrong that was committed then is responsible for the deterioration of the Constitution and has given birth to presidents like Barack Hussein Obama, whom you support by stupidly arguing otherwise.
As much as you want it to be about “because of losing” a war it has never been and never will be about that. It is about losing our country, which you support by stupidly arguing otherwise.
According to the Jeffersonian tradition. The Hamiltonian tradition, which is just as old, holds otherwise. And unlike Jefferson, Hamilton was an actual Founding Father who helped create the Constitution.
The Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian schools of thought on the Constitution have been with us from the beginning. One is just as legitimate as the other. Lincoln was merely a Hamiltonian, just as Washington, Clay, and Webster were before him.
Why did Southerners attack New England for talking secession during the Jefferson administration and the War of 1812? Didn't they believe in "states' rights?"