[Brion McClanahan]

I would ask your friend the following:

1) Was the Articles of Confederation a binding contract, and if so, how then did the States alter the contract without following the proper legal procedures?

2) Did the colonies have a “legal claim” to leave the British Empire in 1776?

All contracts are by nature supposed to be “perpetual” and binding, but none are. Madison described the Constitution not as a social contract among individuals, as your esteemed friend probably believes it is, but as a contract among individual states. “We are not to consider the Federal Union as analogous to the social compact of individuals: for if it were so, a majority would have a right to bind the rest, and even to form a new constitution for the whole….” There you have it. The people of the States, in convention, had the final say, and could breach the contract if they so chose. Read more about this in my “Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution,” Chapter 5, p. 163 ff “The Union.”