I beg to differ, as legal persons they are totally different.
So when I talk, or rather Elaine Scarry talks, about powers reserved to the People, she is talking about the States<=>the People.
Insofar as the Tenth is concerned, they may share attributes, but they function entirely differently as entities. For example, an individual cannot constitute an entire board of directors. An individual cannot adjudicate contract disputes. There are all sorts of business activities that require more than one person and therefore a third party to settle disputes. They are not the same.
On the other hand, corporate and individuals do share attributes, such as your example with South Carolina.
Their refusal to serve, howbeit they had "grounds", was an absolute right,
You are not going to get an argument out of me that the States don't have a Natural Law right to secede; they clearly do. Lincoln was wrong about a lot of things. His ends did not justify his means.
Re TR: He was Morgans butt boy all righty.
That National Guard Act was and is problematic (not politically then, when the GOP had a death-grip on all branches of the federal government), and it needs to be readdressed to cure TR's executive overreach.
No argument there, but it's not exactly atop my Pareto chart. TR was the cheese who built the navy that made the financial panic that provided excuse for the Fed. See above. Yet before we get into war powers, I actually think amending the Constitution to clarify the supremacy clause as regards treaties, change the threshold for ratification either to the 3/4 of the full Senate or State legislatures, and rescind the 17th, are much higher on my list.
Still, I'm with you if what you intend is to dispense with the professional standing army in favor of compulsory national service such that we can return law enforcement to the people.
Even if a solid majority of States told Obama "no", do you think that would deter him from attempting, at least, to "discipline" or even "reorganize" them as John Quincy Adams theorized and Lincoln put into bloody practice?
I don't think there is anything this creep wouldn't attempt if he thought he could get away with it. Hence my comments about Sulla.
I think the idea of compulsory government education has had more to do with inculcating Federal authority than anything.
I appeal to Scarry's article, and to Madison in the Federalist. I'm not talking about state governments, but the People of the State as a "committee of the whole" = the State. I agree that "to the States, or to the People" seems to make them separate, but I'd plead for a reading of the word "or" = "i.e."; but I think Madison's clear enough elsewhere, where he discusses why the Constitution was submitted to the States in convention assembled (outside the state governmental organs), and not to a mass omnium-gatherum "people" of all the States. The Framers shunned all impulses to amalgamation or massification of the States into one People/Nation-State. They established a federal government, not a national one as Madison made clear in Federalist 39, also 40, 41, and 44. He wore out his quill, nuancing what it was the Framers had designed.
I actually think amending the Constitution to clarify the supremacy clause as regards treaties, change the threshold for ratification either to the 3/4 of the full Senate or State legislatures, and rescind the 17th, are much higher on my list.
Sign me up, even though I'm not convinced yet about repealing the 17th yet; it cured a real abuse (purchase of state legislatures by the Interests), and I don't know how to make that problem go away if we went back to status quo ante the 17th.
And you might want to add some language curing Lyndon Johnson's federal grants to strap around the Tenth Amendment and the States and put big-city mayors directly in the President's pocket; that was what LBJ brought to the Constitution-dissolving party.
And while we're at it, the convention might want to address the (unconstitutional, fraudulent) personhood of artificial persons (corporations). That's a bit of Gilded Age fraud that never has been addressed, and which underlies a lot of complaints about corporate political activity like bribery, lobbying, Kelo, and SLAPP suits.