> republic implies strong federalism and democratic does not

This is, in essence, a substantial portion of what is asserted in The Federalist Papers, an 85-part series of letters and treatises written and distributed in 1788 by three proponents of adoption of the US Constitution.

I haven’t read the Federalist Papers, but I would assume that they touched on the reasons why the right to a jury trial was included in the Constitution.

Yet, three of the founders wrote the Federalist Papers, which were distributed in newpaper form to people of New York.

The Federalist Papers give a really good overview.

Note that they spent many years analyzing the failure modes of previous republics, and attempting to design a system resistant to those failure modes.

I mean, we're still on our first republic (at least at the moment), while France is on its fifth, so obviously they did something right.

Yes, certainly. The ongoing discussion is going on right now, we’re part of it as a very small amount of two strangers talking. I think it’s usually informal, but sometimes through debates, books, essays, etc. A good example are the Federalist Papers in the 18th century with back and forth on topics that ended up being articulated in the constitution, bill of rights, etc.

I think it also varies from country to country as it varies quite a bit.

>>"The States of the United States ...."

That would not be proper English nor make any sense linguistically.

If you believe that the Founders thought the States were not independent, and sovereign in their own right then you clearly have not read the Federalist Papers. Take a close look at Federalist 17 as an example

If the States were not separate but equal, i.e the foundational principle of our style of governance, then why call the nation the United *States*, why not just call it America or some other name all together

No the founders clearly believed the States should not be servant to the Federal Government, nor should the Federal Government be servant to individual state governments.

>>Second, the issue was conclusively settled at Appomattox and with the ensuing enactments of the 14th and 15th Amendments.

I disagree that it was conclusively settled, nor do I agree that application of the federal constitution to the states by default makes the states Subservient vassals of the federal government

Further last I check the passage of an Amendment requires the ratification of said amendment by 3/4 of States thus proving they are in fact not vassals as if they were then their consent would not be needed.

>In the modern era that might still be viable if the Senate's power were only to veto enactments by the House, perhaps by a supermajority vote

Yea... no

That does not make any sense historically, legislatively or logically. Having a chamber that can only act in the negative would be a pointless chamber of government.

Bills should be assumed to be Bad and at every level require affirmation.

Your process of legislative review makes about as much sense as a criminal system on the principle of Guilty until Proven innocent.

Laws should be hard to pass, laws should be extremely hard to pass, and federal laws should be almost impossible to pass ensuring the federal government does very little and most governance is done at the local level where it should be done.

In general the government that governs the least, governs the best, and this is quadruple true for a Federal Government

KYC does not give the gov't your transaction history, it simply means that your financial institution needs to verify your identity. It is part of an overall strategy to reduce the amount of damage malevolent actors can create.

You might try reading the Federalist Papers before making claims about the founding fathers. Again, it is not surveillance by government anyhow.

> Yet, three of the founders wrote the Federalist Papers, which were distributed in newpaper form to people of New York.

The existence of a massive political propaganda effort to sell the document to the enfranchised class of a particular state (broader than the elite political class but narrower than regular people) does not prove (indeed, if anything argues against the conclusion) that the document itself was intended to be understandable too and responsive to the interests of even the enfranchised class, much less regular people.