Libertas,
While I agree with your points about the original concept of the Union regarding the purpose of the Federal Government, I think you're overlooking one point, a fairly important one, I think. And you can blame Henry Ford.
It used to be that people never travelled much from the area of their birth, much less to other states or even countries. Wealth, or a lack thereof, had a lot to do with that, but there is also this point: People were proud of where they were born, of the State in which they resided. The Civil War helped kill individuals' pride in their home State, "in order to form a more perfect union." I really cannot see a person siding with their state ever again, though Texas would the only one that even remotely has a chance of tbat happening. How many people are proud to be from Michigan anymore? Or California? Or even a state like Virginia? So the idea of individual loyalty to a State was crushed by the Civil War. Witness the number of Civil War monuments to state regiments or battalions. Like Col. Chamberlain and his Maine boys at the Battle of Little Round Top at Gettysburg. Today, the units are one country's arms and army.
Then we have Henry Ford. Thanks to his assembly line production of the automobile, people became, as the vehicle's name states, self mobile. Now people were free to move about the coutnry at will, with little to no hardship in travel (Pandora's cross-country story not withstanding). With that mobility came a homogeneity of our culture, a lessening of the value of being from a particular state.
FDR helped put the final nails in States' Rights by virtue of his massive expansion of the Federal Government thanks to all his programs he created. With the increase in Federal prpograms, a one-size-fits-all situation occurred, or a one Federal citizen model.
As you state, it will take some governor(s) with some serious cojones to battle the massive behemoth called The Fed. Too many rely on it for their livelihood, whether through direct employment, Social Security, Medicare, or even Government jobs contracted out to the private sector. For an individual state to begin to reassert its rights will be frought with risk, as the resources of the Fed are overwhelming when crushing such dissent. I'd like to see a State try it, though, but I fear that it is like the situation the individual faces with regard to federal intrusion into our lives (that was discussed here elsewhere): No one wants to be the first to stand up and fight and place themselves squarely in the Federal Government's crosshairs. We have Ruby Ridge and Waco as recent examples of such rebellion, and the predictable results which then ensued.