“Defend the Guard” legislation is one of the few interesting developments in the dreary landscape of contemporary politics and government. From Eric Brakey at thehill.com:
Congress has abandoned our soldiers.
Two years have passed since the release of the Afghanistan Papers, revealing that no one in charge — at any point over the last two decades — has ever held a clear idea as to why our soldiers must die in these aimless, costly wars. Yet Congress, following the lead of the Cheneys and the Clintons, fights to maintain the status quo.
Congress is useless, but the states have proven they are not; in recent years, states have nullified a wide range of unlawful federal policies, from FDA regulations against investigational drugs, to cannabis prohibition, to gun control. There is no reason states cannot also apply Thomas Jefferson’s “rightful remedy” and nullify unconstitutional foreign policy by passing “Defend the Guard” (DTG) legislation. Proposed this year in 31 states, DTG invokes state authority to order home the tens of thousands of National Guardsmen currently deployed in any war that Congress has not formally declared.
Nullification was first proposed in 1798 by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison as a state remedy to overreaches of federal power. When President John Adams signed into law the Sedition Act (authorizing the Adams administration, in violation of the First Amendment, to imprison political dissidents), Jefferson and Madison answered with the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, declaring the implied power of the states to nullify unconstitutional federal laws. To this day, the power of states to check federal power holds value for all Americans who wish to live in a free society.
