Federalism

One wonders if the Tea Party-States Rights crowd would even want the Constitution ratified in the first place.

The centrality of debt holders in our constitutional order isn't a bug, it's a feature. Indeed, the national debt -- created through the federal assumption of state war debts -- was created to do precisely this: get the holders of bonds, necessarily wealthy and powerful people, to have a vested interest in the fixity and stability of the federal government.

A pretty good and accessible recent book to read about this is Woody Holton's Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution

William Hogeland's very enjoyable book about the Whiskey Rebellion also treats some of the same material.