West Virginia House of Delegates representative Pat McGeehan joins Scott to discuss shis “Defend the Guard” bill. McGeehan discusses his attempts to defang the empire from the bottom up by passing a bill refusing to allow their state guard services to be nationalized and used in unconstitutional wars. McGeehan’s bill stated that no West Virginian guard unit could be deployed overseas without an expressed declaration of war from the U.S. Congress. He then relays a story about how adjutant general of the West Virginia national guard addressed him about the bill after receiving a call from the Pentagon, which threatened to move the West Virginia national guard onto the BRAC List or relocate them to other states. The bill didn’t pass, but the movement seems like it’s catching momentum.

McGeehan also describes his history in the military, explaining how the number of innocents slaughtered in Afghanistan changed his views on U.S. foreign policy. Those experiences changed McGeehan from a George W. Bush guy to a Ron Paul guy.

Pat McGeehan is a two-term representative in the West Virginia House of Delegates and a graduate of the U.S. air force academy. He is the author of “Stoicism and the Statehouse.” Follow him on Twitter @McGeehan4WV.

Discussed on the show:

• Tenth Amendment Center
• “The American Empire Must Be Stopped” Scott Horton speaks at Nullify Now Los Angeles (Tenth Amendment Center)
• Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) List
• Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11
• Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF)
• Supremacy Clause
• Militia Clause
• The Betrayal of the American Right, by Murray Rothbard
• James Stockdale
• “My Father, the Spy in the Hanoi Hilton,” by Jim Stockdale II (The Daily Beast)
• Epetitus (Stoic philosophy)
• Just War Theory (St. Thomas Aquinas)
• Federalism
• “Book Review: ‘Stoicism and the State House'” (Tenth Amendment Center)
• Cato the Younger

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