The chipping away at state sovereignty happened because states kept using that sovereignty to oppress black people. The post-Civil War amendments were a huge smack down, because they set the stage for binding the states to the Bill of Rights, which had previously only applied to the federal government. That had a big impact not because states couldn't say violate the freedom of speech anymore. States already had similar clauses in their own Constitutions. No, the real significance of that was it elevated the federal courts to a position of supervising state compliance with federal rights.

From there, Supreme Court precedent told the states they couldn't keep blacks from voting, couldn't segregate them, couldn't ban interracial marriage, etc. Every time the states tried to oppress this or that group, they put their sovereignty on the line and the Supreme Court took some of it away. Consider when the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, took a stand against federal court ordered desegregation of the University of Alabama. President LBJ sent federal troops down to Alabama to enforce integration. From a state autonomy standpoint, it was a huge blow, as the federal government asserted its supremacy. The governor of Alabama was forced to step aside on the property of a state university as National Guardsmen escorted black students inside against his will and that of Alabama voters: http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/race/061263race.... This continued through the 1960's and 1970's. The state courts were put in their place when the federal courts started aggressively supervising their procedures, to deal with their tendency to fail to give fair trials to black defendants.

Federalism is dead because the states pissed away all of their political capital trying to oppress people.

That's an very good interpretation of the 60s, and I get behind it 100%. Regrettably though, that in enforcing segregation -- for which segregation is of course is not-discretionary, because they're government institutions -- we also got the federal government's abuse of the interstate commerce clause in applying the same standards that go for government institutions to privately owned businesses.

Any thoughts on how effective Kansas' proposed "allowed discrimination of gays" for private business owners will hold up, if enacted? My thought is that, despite there being a ton of bad precedent regarding the Commerce Clause, private business owners should not be required to obey the 10th amendment, just as Facebook isn't obligated to respect my First amendment right, though I find it curious that they put the 10th up against the 1st, such that only those of a "sincerely held faith" may choose to discriminate, as I think it should be allowed for all private business owners.

Totally agree.

However... wouldn't it be nice if the Supreme Court ruled that:

1. All of the Constitutional rights must be protected by states & localities as well.

2. The Commerce Clause is legitimate.

And left the rest to the states? No significant Federal control of drug laws, drinking age, blah blah blah...

I would be so happy.

A couple of the things he considers to be the federal government trampling states rights are actually the federal government stopping the states from trampling individual rights.

For instance, according to the Supreme Court, the states are bound by the part of the First Amendment that prohibits the establishment of religion or restricting the free exercise of religion.

Paul thinks that establishment of religion or restricting the free exercise of religion should be a state issue. He tried two or three times to introduce federal legislation that would have stripped the federal courts (including the Supreme Court) from hearing cases in this area, which would de facto make that part of the First Amendment no longer apply to state and local government.

He has a similar belief in regard to the privacy rights that the Supreme Court has found implicit in the Constitution. His bills that tried to gut the First also strip federal jurisdiction over any case involving a right of privacy.

If his bill had passed, it would have actually made it legal for states to establish or restrict religions, and it would have brought back into force sodomy laws, bans on birth control, and other such laws that were found Unconstitutional due to violating privacy rights.

Most states, I believe, have prohibitions against establishment of religions, or restrictions on the free exercise of religion, so the damage would be limited in that regard. The first state everyone thinks of is Utah, thinking it would establish Mormanism as the state religion, but Utah is one of the states whose Constitution has a clause similar to the First Amendment. Texas could be a problem. It has a provision in its Constitution that holders of political office must acknowledge the existence of a God, and so in theory an atheist would not be able to legally hold office in Texas if Paul had his way.

Edit: here was one of his bills on this: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.958.IH:

Note that HN's URL recognition misses the last character, so you'll need to add it manual, or copy/paste, rather than just clicking.

Ron Paul's idea, I believe, is to allow states to make the mistakes. Citizens can then "vote with their feet," moving from crappy states to better states. You end up with fifty laboratories experimenting with various policies.

The idea is that he gives few shits about what states do to their residents, so long as the Federal government does not trample on states.

The counterpoint is typically along the lines of "well since he is in the federal politics game, what he thinks about how states can treat people is irrelevant".