Kevin Gutzman's article, referred to by Tom Woods, is right on the mark. The "nationalists" (or misnamed "Federalist Party") began rewriting the history of the founding beginning with Hamilton. Hamilton's plan for the convention was for a permanent president who would appoint all governors and have veto power over all state legislation. A monopolistic monarch, in other words. The reason he wanted this was to force British-style mercantilism on America. Hamilton used the words "imperial glory" to describe what he thought was the purpose of government, in contrast to the Jeffersonians, who beleived the only legitimate purpose of govenment was to protect the lives, liberty and property of its citizens.

So the nationalists invented all kinds of strange superstitions, such as the lie that the states were never sovereign, the absurd notion that the Constituton was somehow ratified by "the whole people" (not including women, of course, who did not get to vote until 1920)and not the citizens of the independent states, and so on.

They failed to get their monopoly government through argumentation, although nationalist political hacks in black robes, like Joseph Story and John Marshall helped them out quite a lot. They finally did "win" the argument, however, when the nationalist Abe Lincoln supervised the murder of some 300,000 American citizens who dissented from being ruled by the old nationalist/Federalist/Republican party mafia. Their method of "winning" was mass murder, not argumentation or even litigation.

What truly qualifies as "nonsense on stilts," to borrow Jeremy Bentham's phrase, is the fact that the whole Straussian/Lincoln- worshipping cabal, from George Will to Harry Jaffa and his cult followers, to the lying little twit Timothy "Lincoln Fellow" Sandefur, prattle on about what experts they are on the Constitution and the founding. But their whole enterprise is based on this false, nationalist mythology, not on actual American history! Their careers are devoted to spreading and perpetuating this Big Lie. Perhaps that is why they become so uncivilized and wage personal smear campaigns against their intellectual opponents: they must know that everything they say is based on a Big Lie, which is being increasingly exposed.