The DOI is not a basis for government, but merely a proclamation of causes for insurrection. As with the Feds in the Civil War, the British Government was well within its rights to respond to the insurrection.
As the Constitution itself puts it, and by ratification the States affirm: "This Constitution ... shall be the supreme Law of the Land."
Groundrules for alteration are spelled out within the Constitution itself. Abolition of the Constitution is not even mentioned within the document itself, and it's hard to see how it could be.
Excellent point. Additionally, the Declaration is expressly written to detail the transgressions of the King, and outline why the colonists felt they had earned the right (by the King's abdication of his responsibilities to govern fairly) to form a new Union.
The actual government of the new Union had not been defined as yet.
Both secession of individual states and the abolition or replacement of the constitution itself are implicitly covered under the provisions governing the amendment of the constitution. Secession was, and still is possible. All that is needed is a constitutional amendment providing for the secession of the states that request it. Similarly, the present constitution could be replaced in its entirety through the amendment process. The amendment could be, in effect, a "deconstitution" detailing the disposition of federal assets and liabilities, treaty obligations, etc.
What is NOT provided for in the constitution is the unilateral secession of individual states.
It is an interesting "what if" question as to what would have happened if a constitutional amendment resolution were introduced in congress in 1860 allowing for the secession of the slave states.
If you want to dispute the book, first read the book.
The bottom-line issue is whether the people of a State, which has voted to leave the Union, are engaged in an insurrection.
How one answers that question determines whether one respects individual rights. Nowhere in the Constitution will you find an explicit premption for a State to vote to leave the Union - only r9etb's quotation regarding insurrection seems to apply to the question of whether secession is a legal endeavor. Put another way, nowhere in the Constitution does one find that the people and/or the States have expressly surrendered their Right to opt out of the Union.
After one reads the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution, it is clear that the People/State's reserved unto themselves the Right clearly spelled out in the Declaration of Independence to leave the Union. IMHO, it is ludicrous to believe that individuals who penned the Declaration of Independence; agreed with Hobbe's Leviathon opinion of government and fought a war against England for their Individual Rights would then create a government they couldn't legally opt out of when it inevitably became uncontrollable.
Call me crazy, but my time in law school and studying history in undergrad leads me to believe that there is a right to secede - if the people of a State vote to do so.
To me, an insurrection is an illegal attempt to overthrow a government - but seccession, i.e. a vote by the citizens of a state for their state to leave the union, is not an attempt to overthrow the US Government; it is merely an expression of the will of the citizens of that State that they wish to govern themselves in a manner different from that which the US Government is currently operating, and therefore legal under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
IMHO.