A legal term of art is often a bit different than the basic word itself. From a legal term of art perspective, I’m essentially referencing “absolute sovereignty”, which would more closely mirror the actual dictionary definition of sovereignty, as a basic, contextless word.
Related to your point about absolute sovereignty I wouldn't disagree with you at all, but I would say that, and I'm not accusing you of doing this by any means, we should be mindful not to shift the goalposts and attempt to depress the meaning and significance of sovereignty just because an entity isn't also absolutely sovereign.
I agree with this, I'm thinking more along the line of debate mistake. I make them, I always invite corrections and I think the willingness to speak on terms of your debate opponent smooths the debate process. Sometimes it does get a bit impractical, heh debating libertarians often involves learning whole new versions of english lol
Still I think you will be more successful if you put forward your caveat on definitions ahead of time, nothing is to be gained during a debate by preemptively declaring your victory, so if I were to suggest improvements to rhetoric, I'd examine my own use of "the fact is that" type things and make sure that what I describe during these uses are indeed facts agreed upon by the debate participants.
Like if I were a libertarian, instead of declaring taxation is theft, I would offer a "wouldn't you agree" and this way we debate participants share a goal of honing in to the fundamental disagreement at stake and I can tell you in my experiences it often comes down to a lack of shared values instead of facts in dispute.
it was a small load of text easily digested, and the word "sovereign" is right there in it very early on. Your argument would be better accepted if you tossed in that you disagree with the characterization and have an opinion what YOU think sovereign entities are. Declarations of fact should only be used when what you are declaring is indeed a fact.
>In practical terms, there is no such thing as a semi-sovereign entity.
According to the text you're replying to, this is also untrue. In the future, I would recommend something like "while the 10th amendment talks about states being sovereign entities, in practical terms the federal government has jurisdiction over some matters involving states" or something like that. Its fine to voice opinions, but declaring your opinions "fact", well good luck with that hehehe