All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
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The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
All right, you guys on the line, we've got Pat McGeehan.
He is a state representative from West Virginia, and he is the author of the Defend the Guard legislation that is now spreading through state legislatures throughout the country and having a great effect.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Pat?
I'm doing great.
Thanks for having me back on, Scott.
It's a pleasure to be on with you.
Really happy to have you here.
So you didn't get it passed, but you did make some headway.
Why don't you tell us all about your attempt this year to pass the Defend the Guard legislation there in West Virginia?
Well, so this is year number six that I've introduced the bill.
And to be fair, the first year when I introduced the bill, we had a little bit of initial progress because some big hitters in the West Virginia legislature signed onto it.
And the first time I introduced the bill was actually when the Republican Party in West Virginia finally gained control of both chambers of the legislature after 80-some years of the Democrats sort of ruling the state.
And I was sort of cautiously optimistic that things would be different now that Republicans and small government folks who were touting small government while they were in the minority screaming at the majority party, the Democrats, all those years, I thought there might be some progress.
So, you know, I got wind of some conceptual pieces that I fit into this bill, the Defend the Guard Act from the Tenth Amendment Center and some others.
And I had some big hitters sign onto it, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who arguably that's the most prestigious committee in the legislature.
It's where all the lawyers hang out, you know, as Shakespeare once famously had one of his characters proclaim, and I believe it was Henry the Sixth or Henry the Fourth, I might have that wrong.
You know, first thing we need to do is kill all the lawyers, which I agree with that.
But that's where the lawyers hang out.
And but he, you know, it's a powerful committee still, and he signed onto it and others signed onto it.
And that was in 2015 when I first introduced the legislation.
But no one, I think, really understood how much of a deviation from the status quo that bill really would pursue.
And you know, the adjutant general of the West Virginia National Guard, who is subservient and reports to the governor, really, really sort of lost his mind over that bill.
And there was this big meeting that year in the Speaker of the House's office, and basically he explained to the speaker and myself and others who had co-sponsored the bill with me in the office in private that, you know, we can't have this.
The Pentagon doesn't like it.
I can't remember all the wording, but so it didn't go anywhere.
So fast forward a few years, I continually reintroduced this bill, Scott, but it wasn't until last year, 2019, when I decided to say, you know what, we got new leadership.
There was a new Speaker of the House who is about my age.
He has always told me he agreed with the bill, and he led me to believe that he would make sure that the bill would run on the agenda and get an up or down vote on the House floor.
And that was last year in 2019.
And that never came to fruition.
And when I, by the time I figured that out, I started pushing the bill myself and using some inside baseball tactics in the legislature that, you know, every member is, can use, it's usually frowned upon, like forcing the vote by, you know, making motions that are frowned upon and discharging the bill from committee, skipping the committee process, bringing the bill to the floor to be debated.
So I was doing those kinds of things and I was winning.
It was shocking, you know, I was winning the votes, you know.
Last year in 2019, I won the motion to bring it to the floor and debate it by, I think it was like six or seven votes, maybe more than that.
And so it picked up a lot of press.
And then so this coalition kind of came together that you mentioned, the Bring Our Troops Home dot com coalition.
And so that came together this past summer.
And you know, there's a lot of great guys involved from different states.
Most of the people involved are state representatives that are former combat veterans, all Republicans, from red states, you know, sort of Trump territory, such as like Idaho, Montana, Utah, you know, a lot of Western states.
There are other states as well, Michigan.
So right now we had about, I think around 10 to maybe 12 different states introduce the bill this year so far.
And so it's sort of come together as this coalition so that the Pentagon cannot pick on any one state and isolate them and threaten them with, you know, loss of federal funding and subsidies or threats that they'll just close down and federalize some of their guard bases, things of that nature.
You know, there's strength in numbers.
And so this year, when everyone sort of knew that I was going to be sort of, you know, going to the mat on this issue, it sort of broke out with, you know, the debates broke out and lasted during this regular session that just wrapped up this past weekend, 60 day regular sessions here in West Virginia.
About three weeks into it, I made a motion to discharge the bill and bring it to the floor for full debate and to pass it.
And you know, I was successful in shutting down the majority leader because there's tactics you can take.
You can motion a table, like if I move to skip the committee process because the committee chairman is never going to put my bill on his agenda.
You know, you make a motion.
If you win a motion, it comes to the floor, you debate it, you could pass it, regardless of what the committee chairman would say that that bill is referenced to.
You know, that's just parliamentary procedure.
So I won the motion against the majority leader who just motioned to table that motion, which meant, OK, vote with me.
I'm going to table it.
And then this issue goes away and they're not even allowed to debate it.
Well, I won that motion on a 50-50 tie vote, which rejected her motion.
And then all of a sudden, the Speaker of the House had to recognize me to open up debate on the floor on the bill, you know.
And so for the next 45 minutes to an hour, we had a foreign policy debate on what's constitutional, what's not, for the next, you know, for the first time, I think, at the state legislative level.
And, you know, so I made all the arguments and then other guys who were loyal to the speaker, more establishment guys, were trying to stand up and make desperate points, you know, that weren't really logical.
And then I got to close debate.
And then when we took the vote, the ultimate vote, to see if my discharge motion would prevail and skip the committee process and come to the floor to be voted on formally for passage, it tied again at 50-50.
So I lost the motion after all that debate in a tie vote.
However, I got a lot of concessions out of that because they were forced to say, OK, we will put it on the agenda.
And some guys at the end of the debate stood up and said, OK, we will put your bill on the agenda in the committee and we'll run it in the committee.
And that was the only way I think they were able to sway a few guys who would have came my way and I would have won the motion.
So they swayed a few votes.
It's still tied.
But it made big news because you had two tie votes and an hour's worth of debate and foreign policy at the state level.
And I think that's one benefit we have towards this.
So after that, it was referenced to two committees.
It went to the Veterans Affairs Committee.
I was the chairman of that committee last year, but I got fired by the Speaker of the House and was no longer the chairman of that committee because partly, I think, because of this bill and for some other reasons.
But it passed.
We got it.
I had to testify in front of the Veterans Affairs Committee and make the arguments at the podium to the members on the committee.
And we won that one.
It passed out of that 15 to 7.
And then it went to the dreaded Judiciary Committee.
I made a motion to waive the second reference to the Judiciary Committee.
And I know this is a lot of inside baseball, but if you follow along, really what I'm just kind of describing is a three or four week long fight, constantly pushing this bill forward.
Yeah, I love it.
There's a lot of obstacles.
You know what I mean?
Keep going with the details.
I like that because at each point you're making, I'm imagining all the people groaning in their teeth, you know, that you're doing this over their dead bodies and everything.
Right, right.
So by the time it got out of the Veterans Affairs Committee, now it had to go to this prestigious, the Judiciary Committee.
And the chairman of that committee hates me, despises me.
We were actually office mates in our first terms together back in 2009 and 2010, in which he was wanting to talk Austrian economics with me all the time.
And you know, we had many conversations about virtue and principle.
And then all of a sudden, when the Republicans took over the legislature in 2015, well, he got this nice plush corner office and a huge staff and named chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
And all of a sudden there was no more discussions with little old Pat McGeehan about principle and all those little, you know, inconvenient things that could get in the way of- Ain't that always the way, huh?
Right, right, right.
And so, you know, you had guys sort of like me and some of my allies, you know, basically screaming, you know, screaming about the ring of power, you know, cast it into the fire, destroy it.
And you had him and some others saying, no, you know, and- Boromir, I know how to use it well, trust me.
Got it.
You got it.
You know, my little girl loves those movies, so I become a nerd with her.
But anyway, so we went to the Judiciary Committee, but he didn't want to run the bill.
But by that point, another thing that benefited this whole process was there was absolutely nothing going on for this legislative session.
You know, in past recent sessions, we had, you know, mass hysteria from teacher strikes that were shutting down every public school in the state.
We had two years in 16 and 17 where we almost closed the government down because no one could come up with a budget that was sustainable or balanced.
So this was the first year where there was nothing of, you know, of calamity or anything really the press could write about, which is very boring.
There was no real agenda.
But this was on the radar.
And so the press really loved writing about this.
There was nothing else to write about.
But this was like, wow, this is, you know, this is making progress and this is really cool to write about, you know, all these debates.
And so they wanted it to go away.
And you know, by when I made that original discharge motion and initiated about a three to four week fight through all these different committees, speeches on the House floor to keep the pressure on, press keeps covering the issue.
They wanted it to go away.
And so the governor's office and the governor was really oblivious to all this, but it was his minions that were going out.
The actual general of the West Virginia National Guard, his general counsel, the general counsel of the governor's office, really, who's also a colonel in the West Virginia National Guard.
All these guys were going around and they were threatening different state representatives and state senators with withholding state money from their districts.
Like we're not giving you that money now for your city park or that regional airport you got out in Martinsburg.
Yeah, it's not getting that million dollar subsidy because you keep voting with McGeehan on these procedural votes to move this bill along.
And so that was going on behind the scenes.
And they actually, the actual general and the general counsel for the National Guard went into the Democratic caucus because there was a lot of Democrats that were with me too.
It was a good bipartisan coalition.
And they said, they told them that, look, there's been this daily memo that's come out of the Pentagon every day since this argument and all this news from this bill has been generated in our state that has West Virginia on some sort of like a red flag list.
Basically, this watchdog list from the Pentagon that gets put out.
And essentially, I guess what they're saying is that we've just been bad boys.
You know what I mean?
And they say, we need to get off this list because, you know, we don't want them upset with us.
And, you know, that could ruin, I don't know what they're trying to say with that.
I really didn't care.
But they went into the Democratic caucus and said, we need to stop, you need to stop even discussing this.
Don't even bring it up anymore.
It's got to be shut down.
And one of my buddies who's a Democrat, who's, you know, a virtuous man, he actually stepped up and said, you know what, I don't like it when the part of the government with all the guns comes into the civilian legislature and starts telling us what we can and can't talk about and can and can't even debate.
And he said that, and I got that from several sources behind closed doors and in a caucus where the ranking, the brass of the West Virginia Guard were telling them, shut this down.
So anyway, it went to the Judiciary Committee.
I tried to make a move to waive the second reference to skip the Judiciary Committee because they wanted to really just get rid of it and do away with the narrative because it was just sucking the oxygen out of the entire room basically for this session.
And so I actually gained about 60 some votes to waive the second reference when I made the motion on the House floor so it wouldn't have to go to the Judiciary Committee.
I didn't really want it to go to that committee because of all the lawyers.
But you need a two-thirds vote because that's a suspension of a House rule.
And so I was short by like four or five people.
And you know, so it went to the Judiciary Committee.
I had to testify.
Of course, I went up there at the podium.
I'm not on the Judiciary Committee.
That's another one I got kicked off of last year.
And I went in and I just said, look, you know, I made the arguments.
You know, they were grilling me.
One guy was bringing up the Barbary pirates and how that proves that we don't need congressional authorization.
That's just some absurd myth.
You know, people were bringing up all sorts of ridiculous arguments and grilling me over this or that.
But I think I held my own, pushed forward a lot of different arguments, you know.
But so there was three tactics that were taken to try to crush this bill.
The first was the behind-the-scenes threats of pulling state funding from different state reps, districts, and doing it that way, who were tacitly supportive of the bill.
And the second was they had to come up with overt arguments because there's a natural precept or a natural feeling in every sort of American's heart, for the most part anyway, that they know that some sort of vote has to be taken before we just go to war.
And so when you make these arguments in the public square, our side wins in the court of public opinion.
And so because they say, well, what do you mean we're not taking votes?
You know, I thought we had to vote before we just went to war.
That doesn't make sense.
And a lot of people don't know that, you know, that we haven't declared war for 75 years.
And they don't understand some of this.
And so we win in the court of public opinion.
So they had to make some overt arguments to my argument.
It couldn't just be all behind closed doors and threats.
So the two arguments they started coming up with was, one was the loss of federal subsidies.
And you know, when it first started, and they first started making these arguments, the threats of losing funding, they were greatly exaggerated.
It started out, they started out with a minuscule amount that we would lose, supposedly lose.
And then by the time it was all over, after the ordeal was over, which was about three and a half weeks that all this took place in, the figures they were presenting, federal subsidies we would lose were just at enormous sums.
I think they started out in the first committee saying we would lose like $80 million in federal subsidies if this bill was passed.
And then by the time it was all ended, the figure was all of a sudden like $500 million, like half a billion dollars.
So you know, I mean, that gives you some indication that they have no idea what they're talking about.
It's just exaggerated threats.
But then the other overt argument that they were trying to scramble to come up with was, you know, they were coming up with this Supreme Court decision.
They had to argue, they had to argue basically this, they had to come up with a legal argument to answer my argument that, you know, the federal government has violated the Constitution for decades and decades, and this really needs to be somehow corrected.
And the only thing they could come up with was this legal argument against the bill, which was based on this Supreme Court case from 1990, it's pretty obscure, where the governor of Minnesota, who evidently didn't like Ronald Reagan, sued in court to prevent his National Guard units from doing their two weeks of training outside of the United States down in Honduras, I believe.
And even that ruling by the court does not work in their favor, because all it said was okay, yeah, a governor cannot withhold his National Guard units for training purposes outside of the United States.
He can't pick and choose, and the federal government does have the right to train the National Guard from different states outside of the United States if it so wishes.
So it doesn't even work in their favor, strictly speaking.
But irrespective of that, you know, there was this, at the end of the day, there was a resolution that finally got passed, you know, the last day of the session, this past Saturday, and so they said, well, we kind of feel, because a lot of people agreed with this, you know, there's a lot of state delegates and politicians who actually agree with me, and they gave me their word, they'd be with me to the end, but, you know, taking on the national security apparatus is much different than taking on, say, you know, the post office or the DMV or something like that, right?
So you really start to know who your friends are and who they aren't, or at the least who's loyal and serious about their oath of office, and who is indifferent to it, or just lacks the will to uphold what they swore they would.
So there's plenty of guys that explicitly told me they'd be with me until the end.
And well, let's just say, you know, I wouldn't want to be in a foxhole with some of these guys, because as soon as the enemy storms the line, you might turn around and you're all by yourself.
But some of these guys who did that, I think they just felt guilty.
So they turned in the bill into a resolution, and I didn't want my name on it, because a resolution doesn't call, it doesn't have the force of law, it doesn't do anything, it's just saying, hey, we beg you to, you know, the federal government to stop this, yada, yada, yada.
So they copied and pasted my bill, you know, which has a lot of quotes from the founders about, you know, the war powers and things like that, and made that the resolution.
But one benefit to the resolution was that the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, which, you know, were authored by Jefferson and Madison, were included in the resolution, and I believe it was just by oversight.
So a lot of lawyers helped draft this resolution, and that's an axiomatic premise that I use for the legal authority to do what we're doing, to withhold our national state's National Guard units, unless there's, you know, the federal government follows the Constitution.
So all these people voted in favor of this resolution, so the significance really of that is that their primary legal argument against the bill overtly was based on this obscure Supreme Court case from 1990, you know, about the governor of Minnesota suing in court, and even that ruling by that court doesn't work in their favor.
But irrespective of that, by officially recognizing the legal precedent of interposition with the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, going forward, logically, any rulings from the Supreme Court no longer really matter to the bill at all.
I mean, because, you know, you know, as all people, what those resolutions from 1798 actually say.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and now, I mean, even though you didn't get your way this time, and the last six times, unfortunately, this really does put you in a better position for trying to get it through next time, right?
That, hey, you guys all voted for this last year, but now it's time to prove that you really meant it.
Come on.
Right?
Yeah.
And that's correct.
You know, by inserting, and I think they inserted by accident, like I was saying, the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions into that resolution that would just pass instead of the actual bill, they made a big mistake.
And I think, really, it was just unwittingly put in there because they just copied and pasted my actual bill to make up the large portion of the House concurrent resolution, which is, you know, like I said, amounts to nothing more than a worthless piece of paper that's sent to the Congress and the White House and says, hey, the West Virginia legislature would like you guys to stop going to war.
But anyway, you know, by using that precedent, that legal precedent that's spelled out by Jefferson and Madison in those resolutions in 1798, it serves as an axiom to go off of, and it completely would do away with the main overt legal argument they had at their disposal, or they went to, to argue against my position.
And that was a Supreme Court ruling from 1990 that really nobody knows about, and it really didn't have any validity towards the subject at hand, if you ask me.
But what they're really saying is they all voted for the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions to recognize them.
And in the future, just like you had mentioned, Scott, I can just make the argument that if you want to be logically consistent, then any rulings from the Supreme Court no longer really matter.
Well, I kind of like that idea.
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Let's talk about this, just overall, the publicity stunt here involved.
Not to demean the effort, because it's certainly not, but it's a huge public relations win, I think.
And, you know, you had sent me a couple of these videos, you know, a little bit of your floor debate, but also one where you're doing a conservative radio show.
And I'm just intuiting the guy's history here that he clearly is old enough to have been absolutely horrible during the Bush years and been a sort of Rush Limbaugh clone type, if I'm not assuming too much about the host.
But from his point of view, as he explained to his audience, hey, everybody, this guy's an Afghan war vet, and he's a Republican member of our state legislature.
So we owe him our ear to say this horrible, controversial stuff we don't like hearing.
And that was so meaningful to him that, geez, I'd like to kick you out of here, hippie, except that you're not a hippie, and I probably would lose that fight.
And so I guess the floor is yours, sir.
And is that, you know, much of your experience, does it seem like that is really making a difference that you're attacking the right from the right and from the position of a war vet who's in the perfect spot to say, I'm telling you, I'm the authority, I'm the one who knows because I was the one who was there the way you've been doing?
Well, you know, no, I understand where you're coming from.
And I think that's part of it.
I never overtly or even implicitly bring any of that up.
I'm sort of known that I come from a military family and, you know, I served and, you know, I still have the same high and tight haircut that I did when I was 17 years old, you know, going into the Air Force Academy.
So, you know, I definitely don't look like a hippie.
And so, you know, I guess that does bring a little bit of credibility to the issue versus someone that is walking in, you know, with long hair and wearing, you know, like a marijuana leaf on their lapel or something like that.
You know.
Yeah.
I mean, it does make a difference.
Unfortunately, logical debates and reasoning don't always win the day.
But I think, you know, in some respects, the gentleman you're referring to, first off, is this guy named Hoppy Kershaville.
And I don't know why many people in West Virginia take his opinion seriously.
He's named after a frog, for crying out loud.
But, you know, he's a catchy kind of centrist gentleman who, you know, is the main sort of political talk show pundit on radio in West Virginia.
He covers a lot of West Virginia sports, but he does all the political commentary and he writes, you know, his own commentary every week.
And everyone in Charleston underneath the Capitol Dome, all the politicians pay attention to what he says, because he's the go to guy.
You get the interview with Hoppy and, you know, it's it's, you know, for whatever reason, like you said, he's just sort of this centrist guy who's, you know, got a sort of, I don't know, some sort of respectability from the Chamber of Commerce types and the Country Club Republicans and the elitist Democrats, the establishment, basically, you know, all go to him to make their case and everyone listens to him.
So unfortunately, you do have to address that.
I've always just ignored the guy.
I mean, at one point years ago, he said he criticized me several times because I was the de facto chairman of what was called the Liberty Caucus in the House.
And, you know, he just thought we were a bunch of numbskulls who were obstructionists or whatever and not reasonable.
And so I've never had a great relationship with the guy.
I've never done anything to him, but he just doesn't like me.
The bill started gaining a whole lot of momentum early on and everyone sort of knew what was coming because last year we had a little bit of limited success with it.
And then this year, the coalition Bring Our Troops Home dot com came together and I wrote a guest, a column that that was published in practically every single newspaper in West Virginia wanted to run this thing.
Even the little weeklies in small little counties in southern coalfields were running this column I wrote on this bill.
And you know, something like, it's amazing, I don't really pay attention to polls, but the one poll that was brought to my attention by one of the guys who's kind of operating the coalition, the Bring Our Troops Home coalition, said, you know, this is one of the highest polling issues, especially amongst Trump voters in West Virginia is a big Trump state.
And it's something like between 75 and 80 percent of Trump voters believe we should bring all the troops home from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
And he's you know, they've said they've never seen results that high of any issue.
And so the bill started gaining traction, especially when I was referring earlier to the big one hour debate on the House floor where we're actually debating foreign policy at the state level.
And reporters had nothing else to write about.
So it's on the front page of literally every paper.
And you know, it was gaining a lot of traction.
So then this guy, this news man, the pundit who's kind of the go to political commentator, sort of had to address it.
And he put out a commentary without even contacting me.
And the commentary that you're referring to did say up front, hey, we have to listen to this guy.
But that was sort of like a nicety to say, OK, yeah, this guy served.
I want to make sure that everyone knows that.
So I'm being nice.
But here are all the talking points that I was obviously handed by that.
And I'm pretending to be him.
You know, he was obviously handed all of the talking points from the Adjutant General of the West Virginia National Guard, handed down from the Pentagon.
And all the talking points after that commentary, you notice were, you know, this is actually unconstitutional.
There was a court case and he named the court case.
It was the Minnesota governor, I told you, that took the Reagan administration to court and from 1990.
And then he said we were.
But the main point, you know, he didn't even care about the Supreme Court case, where if you were really serious and saying, well, this is unconstitutional, that would be your primary argument, I would suppose.
But no, the primary argument in his commentary there was that, you know, we're going to lose all this money.
I don't think they could ever pinpoint how much money, in federal subsidies anyway, we were going to lose.
And we weren't going to lose any.
It was exaggerated.
And I studied the law on it.
And maybe down the line, if the bill was to pass, potentially that could happen.
But only if Donald Trump himself authorized withdrawing federal funds, since we're not willing to go overseas or something like that.
He could potentially do that under some sort of federal law.
But that's just unlikely to happen, especially in states that support Trump.
But all of that, that was his main point, that we're going to lose federal money.
Not that it was unconstitutional.
He just briefly mentioned that.
He would never have known that, any of that stuff, had it not been handed to him by the adjutant general.
And it was because the bill was starting to really gain steam and something had to be done.
And he figured that was the kill shot.
You get this guy who everybody pays attention to under the dome, all the establishments from both parties, the center right guys and the center left guys, and you just put it out there and you kill it.
So he wouldn't even, I reached out to him and said, well, I got to go on his show now and answer this.
Well, he was hesitant to even let me on.
I kind of was under the impression that maybe he got some sort of direction, Scott, that maybe he shouldn't let me on or give me any airtime, because maybe that would be dangerous.
Because the only power really that guys like us, I guess, in our camp have really, because the Liberty Caucus I used to have has been dwindled.
So it's really just me anymore.
It used to be about a dozen guys, but since then it's just been dwindled down.
So the only power really, and that's the true power really, is speaking the truth publicly in front, because the truth carries a lot of weight.
There might be guys that aren't going to vote with you, but when you're telling the truth out in public, in front of God and his creation, in front of the media, that leaves a certain level of guilt on someone's conscience who really wants to do the right thing.
But because of ambition or political reasons or those at power putting pressure on them, they don't go with the truth.
They go with the opposite, and that does leave some guilt.
So anyway, they finally let me on, and I did that interview, and I think I sent part of it to you.
I was just sort of prepared for it because I knew I would be walking into a hostile interview there.
I thought it would be more hostile than what it was, but I thought it went well, and that just sort of propelled more momentum.
So we carried a lot of momentum after that.
Well, he certainly made a great case in the interview.
I think his audience, especially if they're checking the calendar, they must have agreed with you.
What's that?
Oh, I'm sorry.
Well, I mean, you made a great case on the show, so, you know, the audience must have been won over, especially if they were checking the calendar and like, yeah, 2020, we've been there too long.
That checks out.
I think we're ready to go.
Right, right, right.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think so.
All right, so listen, I mean, you really are paving the way here.
Was this your idea in the first place, this defend the guard thing?
Yes, I mean, but I don't want to take full credit for it because the Tenth Amendment Center had some framework for something like this.
And so, so to be honest, looking back, it was sort of like Newton and Leibniz coming up with calculus at the same time.
I gotcha.
Hey, good old Michael Bolden, man.
Talk about great minds think alike, you know, him and Mike Meharry and those guys over there are heroes too.
So by the way, I was told to tell you that Mike Meharry says hi.
Oh, good deal.
I talked to Mike a lot.
I love him.
So great.
And he's writing for the Institute now to everybody, not just reprinting stuff from the Tenth Amendment Center, but he's writing originals for us now.
So another reason to look at the Libertarian Institute site.
But so listen, though, but tell me about this movement, because you really have started a thing here and you got bringourtroopshome.us, which is all war veterans and led by combat veterans of the 21st century terror wars.
And they're not too exclusive, but at least the leadership is libertarian and right leaning, which gives it, you know, an important kind of distinction and place in the political argument there.
And then they're in alliance with the Ron Paulian group, Young Americans for Liberty.
And I don't know who else.
And you guys are all working together to get this thing introduced.
And you have gotten it introduced in different state legislatures all across the country.
So I know they're not passing yet, but it seems like real progress.
Can you tell us as much as you can about that?
Yeah, you know, I'm just really excited about it, Scott, because I just thought it was some wacky idea that I had, you know, and I put it in and then I talk with I think it was Michael Bolton at the Tenth Amendment Center.
And he said, yeah, we got a framework.
But I kind of built my own bill and, you know, and that was it really.
You know, I got some sponsors and I figured, well, I'm going to put this in and see what happens.
But since that time, you know, when I just basically last year just had enough of it and said, I'm just going to this is this is going to be my issue.
You know, I have a comparative advantage on this issue.
I've always been passionate about this issue.
I'm tired of just coming down here and talking about, you know, state tax reform, whether we should lower the sales tax by half a percent or a quarter percent or, you know, whether we should require dentists to have, you know, 12 hours of continuing education instead of 15 or something like that.
So I'm like, if I'm going to waste my time in the state legislature, and I shouldn't say waste my time, but go down there and be away from my little girl and and things of that nature, you know, I might as well do something and dedicate my time down there to something that would possibly make a real difference in something that I think is the most important issue we face in our lifetimes.
And that's the warfare state and the empire.
And so last year, you know, that's when I started focusing on it, you know, pulling procedural motions, discharging the bill.
I won that motion, like I kind of told you last year, and that started generating some media attention.
And then over the summer, you know, I was training for a marathon.
I had open heart surgery back in May of 18.
And then my goal was to run like a marathon within a year.
So I've been running, but I keep my phone on me when I run.
And I got a call from a guy who was a former legislator in Michigan.
And he said, hey, he sent me an email.
And I called him actually while I was running.
And I said, I got your email.
You're interested in the Defendant Guard Act?
He said, listen, me and a bunch of other guys have been thinking about how the heck we can push back against the warfare state at the state level.
And we started Googling.
And all of a sudden, we start seeing this guy from West Virginia pop up, you know, that's been doing this for years.
And we said, this is a great concept.
This is it.
And so, you know, I had a couple conditions, you know, because I said, hey, look, I don't know you guys yet, but I love it.
As long as we're going to just do this for the cause, you know, and push this issue and we're not doing it to benefit any one person's personal political career or ambition, or we're not going to sell out to feds, I'm in.
And so he called me back and actually, I think it was right there.
He said, all right, yeah, that's it.
You got my word of honor.
And we sort of, you know, mentally shook hands over the phone.
And we went from there.
And then so there's a guy named Tyler Lindholm, who's a good Liberty guy, state rep in Wyoming.
He's the big part of it.
Dan McKnight, I can't say enough good things about Dan McKnight from Idaho.
He's not a politician or a legislator, but he is a former guardsman and did, I think it was active duty Army and then or active duty Marines.
And then he switched to Army National Guard in Idaho.
And he did several tours in Afghanistan.
And he's hardcore.
He got the lieutenant governor of Idaho on board.
And they've been pushing it hard.
And he's sort of the head guru, the head leader of the of the coalition, the spokesman, Dan McKnight.
He's great.
And I really respect him a lot.
And then there's others.
You know, Tulsi Gabbard's father actually is a legislator in Hawaii and was interested in introducing the bill.
And I think he got actually one of his colleagues, a Democrat colleague in Hawaii, as the guy that ended up introducing the bill in Hawaii.
So as of now, I think we got about 10 different states that have formally introduced the bill.
Don't quote me on that, but I believe counting West Virginia, it's around 10.
But we have many more that are considering introducing the bill or have pledged to introduce the bill, because, you know, not all states have their legislative sessions at the same time.
There's different real weird rules sometimes when you get to some of these different state legislative procedures.
You know, like I know in Wyoming, they needed like you need two thirds ratification vote by the whole legislative body before you can actually introduce your bill, you know, which is weird.
And there's other weird things like that.
But notwithstanding, we've got plenty of leads, plenty of pledges right now.
I think it's around 10 states that have done it, but it's gaining traction.
You know, even if none of these bills pass, one of the main benefits to this concept is that state level legislators can now openly discuss war and peace in the public arena.
And I think that is of huge value to the fight against the warfare state, because one thing that goes with that is, first off, you're closer to the people, you can speak the truth a lot easier, and you can gain people to your side, because a lot of state legislators have been far less corrupted by the quote unquote, military establishment or military industrial complex, because that's all, you know, rigged around Washington, D.C. and the money machine, the printing press.
So you go to places like Charleston, West Virginia, you know, where our state capital is here, you know, you know what the population of Charleston, West Virginia is, it's like between 50 and 60,000 people.
You go to Tallahassee, Florida, now that's a big one, but you know, there's not a whole lot of people on K Street that are lobbying for defense contractors, you know, in these state capitals.
You know, you go to Montana, the same thing.
We got a guy in Idaho, we got a guy in South Carolina, we got a guy in Oklahoma, there's a West Point grad I'm going to be speaking with soon in Texas, who's extremely bright, I've heard, and he's going to be helping trying to push the bill in Texas.
Texas's legislature only meets every other year, they didn't meet this year, so hopefully the Texas will introduce the bill this coming year.
They've already put it in the GOP platform for Texas, so you know, myself and another ally of mine, a former legislator here in West Virginia, flew down to Tallahassee, Florida just on Sunday, this past Sunday night, and because there's legislators from Florida in Tallahassee that are interested in introducing the bill there.
And so I gave a presentation in front of, you know, maybe like 20 different folks in some conference room at their state house.
I don't know if you've ever seen the state capital in Tallahassee, Florida, but it looks like a generic office building from the early 1980s that might have been used as, you know, during the first episode of Miami Vice or something.
It's real generic looking, very weird.
I like that.
I like that.
I don't like it when they build these giant monuments to themselves.
The Texas state capital is a giant granite monstrosity, like they think they're special, but they're not.
So anyway, go ahead.
Right.
Yeah, you know, maybe it should be ugly, you know, and so just like the state- Yeah, put them all in a strip mall, that sounds about right, you know?
Yeah, right.
But anyway, so it was weird, but anyway, I gave this presentation and, you know, there's non-ideologues that are interested in this.
There's a couple guys that are really, you know, younger guys.
There's one younger guy down there who I really liked, and he's all about it.
But, you know, there's one gentleman there that was in his early 60s, and he came up to me, and we had something in common.
He's a 1980 graduate of the Air Force Academy, and, you know, and he thinks he knew my father.
My father was a 1978 graduate of the Air Force Academy, so he thinks he knew my dad, my old man, while they were cadets a long time ago, and so he came up to me afterwards.
He attended the briefing, and he represents the first district from the Florida House, and those districts are much larger than, say, here in West Virginia because their population is just so huge.
I mean, Florida's the third largest state by population, and so he just came up to me and said, hey, look, you know, this is the principle of the lesser magistrate.
This is like the lower barons forcing the king to sign the Magna Carta, you know.
This is, I really believe in this kind of thing, and we've just been engaged in wars too long, and he's not, I could tell he's not an ideologue, but he's a very good man, I could tell, good heart, very principled, and he was texting me later on in the day.
We swapped numbers and asking, hey, can you give me the video for the debate that you had about the bill on the floor of the West Virginia legislature, and I gave him that, and, you know, and we've been swapping texts, and so you meet some of these guys who aren't necessarily like, say, in, you know, the constitutional conservative camp or the libertarian camp or whatever, but there are people that are now sympathizing with that position simply because they recognize that something is fundamentally wrong, and so, you know, I like kind of guys like that who are vets, who know what they're talking about, who, you know, are older and more experienced and I know aren't going to just break under pressure, you know, because I really believe, you know, not to get too, the sky is falling, I think we had enough of that, you know, last week with this virus pandemonium, but I do think the fate of Western civilization really depends, at least in part, on whether we can reverse course on American foreign policy, you know, because great civilizations have been destroyed because they've fallen into the same trap of becoming increasingly militant, and so I don't know.
Anyway, that's sort of in a nutshell, you know, where the coalition stands, and I think it only stands to gain more, a force to be reckoned with this year since, you know, we came out of the gate and I think we demonstrated that we have a bright future here, so anyway, I'm just glad I made it through in one piece, man, because it's not, people should know when they take this cause up, it's not some sort of willy-nilly easy task just to introduce the bill and then push the debate.
Oh, certainly not, no, it's definitely worth it though, man, I hope you try again next year, I hope it works this time.
Oh yeah, I'll stay the course, don't worry about that.
All right, okay guys, well, that is Pat McGeehan, he is a state representative there in West Virginia and leading the Defend the Guard movement and introducing the Defend the Guard Act there.
Thank you very much again for your time, Pat.
Thanks a lot, Scott, good talking to you.
