Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 7/1/22 Diego Rivera on Defend the Guard and the Art of Effective Activism

Episode Date: July 4, 2022

Scott interviews Diego Rivera, a veteran and activist, to talk about Defend the Guard legislation. The bill, which has been introduced in nearly all the State Legislatures, aims to block the deployment of National Guard troops to foreign combat operations unless Congress actually declares war. Rivera details the new initiative Bring Our Troops Home, the group behind Defend the Guard, is rolling out to train people in the art of effective political activism. Scott and Rivera discuss how seemingly powerless groups with no access can effectively bring about political change.  Discussed on the show: Defend the Guard Bring Our Troops Home Leadership Class Ten Seven Club [e-mail] Diego Rivera is an Iraq War veteran and activist. Follow him on Twitter @Diego4Liberty. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot four you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys introducing diego r vera he was a ranger in iraq war two and now he is with bring our troops home dot us and helping to spearhead their project defend the guard Welcome the show. How you doing, Diego? Doing good, man. Thanks.

Good to see you. Hey, listen, tell the people all about Defend the Guard. What does that mean and what does it have to do with anything important to them? Right. So what Defend the Guard is, is for people listening, it's just a push towards radical decentralization as a way of tackling our foreign policy problem. Right. So through Bringer Troops Home, and I know that Dan's told the story, is essentially that we've tried to address this issue on a federal. level. So what we're doing is instead focusing on a 10th Amendment way to strike at the heart of this. And so what Defend the Guard says is that, you know, with this legislation, essentially, that without a declaration of war from Congress, which is how it says in the Constitution that you're supposed to go to war, that the states reserve the right not to send their troops overseas into

combat. And it's that simple. And then so, but what difference does that make overall in the scheme of things? Help us understand. Sure. So if you think about it, at the height of the search with the largest occupational forces, about 45% of the National Guard were the ones over there. Now, you think about the National Guard, they're supposed to be, let's call it the state's militias, right? They're supposed to be here when there's a freeze in Texas or when there's a fire in Oregon or et cetera. But instead, they're being deployed overseas in a combat zone that have never been, you know, constitutionally sound, right? all of this was done through an AUMF and authorization to use a military force, right, which is on constitution. So this is just another way of bringing home our boys, uh, on planes rather than

in boxes. Yeah. Now, so where's this project come from? Are you guys a bunch of stinking hippies or something? Yeah. I don't think that's the case. Uh, you know, uh, we're all, you know, uh, right of center. Uh, we're all combat vets. Uh, uh, I'm pretty sure none of us here have blue hair. It's just that, you know, we actually want to put our local states, our country before, you know, the interests of, you know, politicians and corporate interests, right? I don't think there's anything wrong with that. We're just trying to put America first. Absolutely right.

And listen, hippies typically are very good on foreign policy. So I'm not knocking them. I'm just saying sometimes people might want to not listen to a hippie, but they're not. They might listen to a ranger who's been to the war and back and learn the hard way, huh? Right, right. Yeah, so I won't knock them either. You know, there are allies, but, you know, so are a lot of, you know, conservatives, libertarians that, you know, just want to put this country first.

You know, they want to end these endless wars, and so do we. All right. So now talk about the progress on this issue over the past few years because, you know, again, I think it is the magic that comes with you guys' resume that this has been one of the most successful activist campaigns in the country on any issue in the past couple of years in terms of y'all's ability at least to get this thing introduced all over the place, not necessarily rammed through the 50 states, but you've gone from zero to a few hundred miles an hour here in a very short amount of time, it seems like.

Yeah, I'm not mad. You know, essentially Defend the Guard was filed by one state legislator. Pat McGeehan, he's kind of like the OG Defend the Guard champion. And I believe, what was it, two years ago, we were about five states that introduced this. And I thought that was pretty cool. But as of the past year, year and a half, we've seen it to where, you know, 31 states introduced it. now, I think it's 43 states have at least introduced this bill. We've had it hurting committees now.

Wow. And we're starting to have these fights. So that's a huge jump from, you know, Pat McGeehan just pushing this through and fighting like hell to where we've had at least 43 introductions throughout the states with several co-sponsors. Yeah. That's really great. I mean, 43 states right there. And you can see how when PBS News Hour came out and did a 20 minutes special on you guys

that they were taking this seriously. they weren't even going for the I know let's smear them and attack them kind of slant because they didn't dare so the whole question just was wow how effective could this be what effective threat does it amount to and you know from the Pentagon's point of view and you know they just took it absolutely as seriously as can be and that's before you got it through a single state house right so and I'm sorry you have got it passed at least in one state right or two houses a resident a resolution was put forward in South Dakota. I don't know that I went to the Senate or anything like that. I'd have to double check, but no, there hasn't been a passing. I think that when that happens, we're all going to have steak and lobsters. Yeah, good. Well, listen, you know, one of my, you know, right around the same time that I was trying to testify with you guys in front of the Texas and Maine,

and I forgot what the other one was the state legislatures where y'all brought me along. um right around that same time i did testify successfully and helped um and i think it really helped make the difference in getting a resolution passed through the montana state senate that was their demand that the that their delegation to congress and the broader u.s congress repeal the a umf of 2001 and that was sponsored and pushed by concerned veterans of america which is part of the coctopus, but, you know, it's led by right-leaning anti-war vets, just like bring our troops home. And Dan Caldwell, and those guys are good guys over there.

And also Americans for Prosperity. And, you know, they seem like a lot of really good guys. I don't know everything about them, but from my experience, they were just great in pushing this kind of thing. And it just seemed like we had to figure out how to join forces where we support their legislation, when they're pushing things like that and get them fully on board for this thing. I don't think there's any contradiction here or a question of like, oh, you know, what we're doing would be too radical for them or what they're doing is not radical enough for us.

There's no issue like that. I think it should be great. And I'm not sure what we need to do. Maybe I can just start an email group here and try to get something going. I'll talk to Dan first. But it seems like if we can join forces with. more and more groups who are closely enough aligned like that, that that could really help maybe to push this through and get some senates and some governors to sign it.

Right. And so we do need a lot of institutional support, not just from concerned veterans for America or AFP or these guys, but just in the general's perspective is like, why can't we come together with the ACLU who has endorsed our bill in West Virginia or the American Legion who have endorsed this and put this as actually their state platforms. They introduced a resolution to support Defend the Guard in Maine. So we have people all over the spectrum that are coming together and saying, yeah, so we should be coming together for this one issue. I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. Yeah, definitely not. All right. So now tell us a little bit about your next project here, not that this one's over, but you guys are expanding what you're doing

there at bring our troops home.us right so one thing that i've noticed is so i i do the field operations for bring our troops home and it's that you know we have a lot of people that are you know let's just say philosophically sound at least on this issue right that are with us uh that comes from all different sorts of places you know um and they're they're right on the issue but what i've noticed is that it takes a lot of my time to kind of get them to understand political strategy. That is, like, I feel like the next evolution and what we can do to really help our grassroots activists, right, because it takes a lot of coaching and handholding to try

to get them to figure out what they can do and how to be effective, right? So, so for example, you know, they think that, like, for example, sign waving and stuff like that has an actual effect on putting pressure on people. And it's like, well, maybe let's just give you a little bit of an edge so that, you know, people fear you. And I'd rather have the politicians fear us and hate us and do what we want than them essentially either ignoring us or just being like, yeah, you know, you guys are cool and whatever, but essentially just finding a way to just keep pushing this along. So I want to get the activist where they actually have teeth when they come out for something. And so that's

going to be a huge class, right? So, you know, bring our troops home is putting together what we're called the political leadership training. Right. And what we're going to do is essentially focus on the confrontational model of politics, right, and grassroots activism, like real grassroots. Not virtue signaling online, none of that. But essentially, think of the phrase, I don't care if you see the light so long as you feel the heat. So I don't care if, you know, for you're a, what was it, a Prada socialist or whatever, or I don't care if you're just an establishment hack, but you're voting the way I want you to vote and you're doing what I want because you fear me. And that's more important than just trying to find the one guy who's a shining light. That's great. We need our champions

and that's some of the stuff that we discussed too is the difference between inside and outside operations. We cover the real nature of politics. We cover election season, grassroots strategy. And essentially it's going to be somewhere between an eight to 10 hour class because we want to do this in one day and really get people to where they're effective with their grassroots. They're not just running in circles because a lot of the times, too, there is an effect where your heart's in it. You're trying to do the right thing, but you're finding out that you just can't get a dub. You just can't get a win. And this is another way to help sort of like empower these like activists that are still learning to give them a strategy to where

they can see that what they're actually doing is having an effect. So what if you came together and we push to Fend the Guard. And we'll explain that too, obviously. But what if you got red light cameras, you know, taken down in your district or in your city or county or whatever it is? What if you can make local changes like that? You would actually be energized and it would actually help build more of a community of people that can actually get stuff done.

And building that, you know, base and using this as a force multiplier is going to be the next step and what we need to actually be effective with our stuff because now we can convince people, hey, we've got a great bill and we do. This is probably, I'd say with the lockdowns and all this stuff, this is right up there as far as like 10th Amendment, radical decentralization. This is going to be one of the best things that you could ever do. If you're sick of these wars, it's this. But now we have to make effective strategists on how to be able to get this done and how they can come together, not spin their wheels, and actually get stuff done. And slowly we can put this forward.

this is strategy that's not new, you know, the right to work, constitutional carry, legalizing marijuana, all of this stuff. It's essentially the same tactics, but now we're teaching it to those who care about liberty, who care about ending these endless wars. Hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, the audiobook of my book, enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism is finally done. Yes, of course, read by me. It's available at Audible, Amazon, Apple Books, and soon on Google Play and what whatever other options there are out there. It's my history of America's War on Terrorism from 1979 through today. Give it a listen and see if you agree. It's time to just come home.

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I exams provided by independent optometrists um listen i have an example of one idea in mind i think it's okay to talk about this openly i kind of want to spread the word um what i would like to do is run the libertarian party as an extortion racket against the republicans especially but we could do it against democrats too in certain cases for sure but essentially say listen if you well to put it nicely if you do this and this and this and this, not promise, but do these things, we won't run against you in the general. Right. Which is a nice way of saying, if you don't give in to our demands, we're going to run against you,

and in fact, we're going to be smart about it, we're going to attack you from the right and make you look like a big government liberal rhino type, and then you're going to lose to the Democrat. And then especially we can make that stick a few times. In fact, we probably shouldn't even warn them at first. We should probably just, you know, run against them and defeat them a few times and show proof of concept and then start extorting them from there. So that's, you know, one idea that I have. And I can think of a couple of examples where we really could make the difference there and in a way where they will know that we were the ones who punish them, you know what I mean, where it would matter. But so I wonder, you know, what other kind of examples do you have in mind as far as making them feel the heat?

Because, you know, it comes down to money, right? It comes down to donors and TV ads and who the hell are we to do or say anything about politics and actual power in this country, Diego. Right. And so that's going to be part of it. Everything here, and I'm going to be going detailed into like statistics of like, let's say, how many doors you have to knock, how many conversations at the door you have to knock in order to get one new vote or how many mailers do you have to send or how many phone banks or. phone calls do you have to make? How effective is it to send emails? How effective is it to do a radio, GOTV, which is get out the vote. So it's a push before elections or something like that. And really break it down on fundraising, on everything, list building, right? Is you want a

bigger audience. You want to captivate more people's attention. All of that strategy is going to be in there, but to what you're saying, right, is like if when you have power, not access, access is you know, when they return your phone call or when they say, you know, that sounds like a really good idea. I'm going to talk to my guys. They might come back to you and be like, well, we talk to leadership and they just said, you know, this year we're going to try to focus on this. But, you know, next year we're going to talk about it. So what they're giving you is access to their power, but you don't actually have power. When you can get somebody, you know, when you can get them to lose their election or at least scare them, right? Or get a recorded vote, right?

get this on record. Get them to actually put the bill forward, have a vote, and see who you need to attack. And then from there, we talk about things like five column analysis and Red Box 4, which I'm not going to try to explain now, but these are just different strategies that you could do to focus on how to win and how to make other people lose, right? So it's like, it's almost like don't die for your country, make the enemy die for his. It's sort of like that. And we're going to teach people how to do this to where we say, hey, by the way, I think it's great, Scott. you want to present a libertarian to position himself to the right of a Republican or left of a Democrat. What if you also found primary opponents? Like, let's say you found a liberty

type Republican or whatever, and you just had him run him in the primary. And then now also you have a libertarian in the general that could take even more votes, even if he gets past the primary. Virtual fist bump right here across the electrons, bud. Hell yeah. So it's stuff like this and just figuring out, like, you can see what their vote margins were. This guy won by like 30 votes last time. He's in hot water. If I find a good Republican or a good libertarian or both, right, and position them like this. And now they're both beating up on him, you know, and now you can fundraise. You know how to raise funds. Now you can build lists. Now you can reach out to those lists. You can get teams assembled. Sometimes, you know,

especially too with libertarian resources or stuff like that, we can talk about strategy to where it's like, hey, maybe we can't afford all of the lit and all of the volunteers to knock an entire district to really go after a state rep or something like that. But what if we went and knocked doors in his communities and his surrounding neighborhoods, right? So, you know, he lives in this gated community or in this little section. What if you knock that section around and let's say family members to make it appear like you're knocking an entire district, right? So you're trying to find ways to what you realize what kind of resources you have. You realize what you want to get out of this fight. Do you want to get them to vote the right way? Do you want to get them scared about

an election? Like, whatever it is, whatever you're trying to accomplish, like how to put those pieces together to where you know if you're knocking family members, his neighboring community, his gated community, whatever it is, he's going to think you're actually doing an entire targeted block, but you're just being strategic because maybe you don't have funds or whatever. So you get X amount of literature. You get X a number of volunteers to knock doors, say, hey, by the way, did you know that Peter such and such plans on voting for red flag gun laws? Do you know that he doesn't support his veterans and doesn't care about the defend the guard legislation that's up for a vote next week?

And so being strategic like this to really position them to where out of desperation, they'll do the right thing, not because they're good. So there's different ways to do it, to kill bills that are bad, to promote ones that are good, to at least get on record and different tears, right? whether it's you have them introducing a bill or you have them co-sponsoring it or they're making public endorsement they sign a pledge on a tier of what's most important where are your champions or where are the people that are just acquiesce and still do the right thing and where the people that won't do the right thing so we punish them and it's just going to be about figuring all of that

out yep well i'll tell you what man um i said this before to dan mcnight i said you guys you can be flat broke bankrupt and you got a billion dollars in your bank account in terms of your potential public relations power when you say this Republican doesn't support his troops because he doesn't support this defend the guard bill

boy I better stay out of that one let you guys hash that out I don't know what in the world the Republican congressman is supposed to say to that other than really sorry about that adjust in my position forthright you know

forthwith some kind of thing immediately right what's he supposed to say to you right after that

so and it's not just that but it's the entire debate about the wars when you guys say you're sick and tired of this thing

that's pretty damn definitive and so it'd be nice if people would donate a billion dollars to bring our troops home dot us too

but even without it. You can see, just like with the Defend the Guard legislation, how are you guys able to get this thing introduced in 43-something states? It's the, you know, history. It's the titles and, you know,

the muscles and the haircuts and all the things that matter the most. You were there, you know, you and I didn't make the best impression on the Texas legislature, but you know, who did was Brian Sharp. He got up there and he goes, yeah, I went to West Point. And they were

like, oh my God. You know, like he was George Washington himself walked into the room. They couldn't believe it. The West Point? Like I seen in the movies? Wow. They were just blown away. And, you know, obviously things ultimately didn't go away in that house, but we got it out of that committee, right?

And that was what did it was, wow, a real live, you know, I forgot what he was, a lieutenant colonel or, you know, whatever his rank was. but a real live officer there talking about the law and talking about these wars and all that stuff to them. It mattered so much. I mean, it was just huge. He might as well have been a general or something. So that's the thing of it, man. I mean, you guys can do this.

You're doing it right now. And that goes for a lot of you anti-war veterans in the audience. And I know there's a lot. A lot of y'all are looking for something to do. A lot of y'all agree with me. you wish you could have done something like this all along but here Dan McKnight done did it for you and so now it's just something for all you guys to rally behind

it's already here and Diego lead the way how do people contact you how do people join your group yeah perfect so I mean there's several different ways we have bring our troops home dot us we have defendant guard us which focuses on that specific policy on bring our troops home dot us we just added the leadership class so you can sign up there to host or to attend. So if you want to get a school set up in your neighbor, what I say is like,

let's get at least 30 people because we have to set, you know, we have to pay for a venue. We have to get hotels, flights, all this stuff. So like, let's at least get, you know, 30, 40 people into a class, right? Not too big because, you know, it's kind of, it's very personal. And again, there's going to be lots of emotions and stories and strategy and stuff like that. So just big enough to where, you know, it makes sense for us to fly out there and do this. because we really want to affect this stuff. And then if you go to 107 club for donors, right, this is where you can help. So 107 written out 107 club.com, that's where you can donate if you want to.

I encourage it. I never stand down from saying, I think you should donate because we can't change the world if we can't pay the rent. And so I just want to make sure that we always have that because when we want to do, what we want to do is we want to be able to go after people, blow up their phone, you know, knock the shit out of their districts and scare the fuck out of them.

Really put them on blasts. That gives you teeth. That gives you power because now you are feared. And so 107club.com for donations, bring our troops,em. dot us for the political leadership classes and just polls, stories,

everything from PBS to sub-sac articles, all sorts of press that we've been in, different legislators, defend the guard. US to figure out if your state has a champion or, you know, there's some that have introduced it that are not even that good. In South Carolina, we had a guy that introduced it, but didn't do shit for it. So if you're in South Carolina, you've got a better legislator that actually cares about this.

Come talk to me. And just even personally, if you email me, Diego of bringertroup's home.net, right? So it's dot net, not dot us. Diego bringer troops home. dot net. I'll make it to where we're having a phone call within a day or two and talking about what we can do. And I want to spend the time to help, you know, actually get this forward because I want to work myself out of a job. So if you actually reach out to me at Diego at bringer troop home.com. You and I will be talking very soon and I will do everything within my chance

of making sure that I'm setting you up for success. Yep. That's great. I got to tell you, I told you this before. I had this idea. all along. What we need is Ron Paulian, libertarian, Republican, Linen, combat veterans from this century to lead a major new anti-war group and anti-war movement. And then I forgot how it happened now, but Dan McKnight emailed me one day or whatever it was and said, hey, look what I did. And it was exactly like in my daydream that, and I had brought this idea up to various anti-war veterans that I've known over the years. And they all thought, yeah, that's a great idea. Somebody should do that. Obviously, I can't do that. I never was in the army. So this is exactly what I've always

kind of conceived of as, you know, what would be and could be the most effective anti-war organization. I mean, it's pretty obvious. But you guys are doing it. And you are actually doing it, not just talking about it and sitting on a website. You're getting such great work done. And so everybody, that is Diego Rivera. It's bring our troops home.com. U.S. Defend the Guard.us and 107 Club. All spelled out, right? 107 club? Yep. Dot com. That's for the major donors to support this effort. Thank you again for all your time and all your great work, Diego. Thanks, man.

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