Today marks the 389th birthday of the National Guard — the oldest military institution in America, founded in 1636 when the Massachusetts Bay Colony organized its militia. Before there was a U.S. Constitution, there were citizen-soldiers standing ready to defend their homes and their states.

The Framers understood the importance of this tradition and reserved special powers to the militia because they knew it was essential to liberty. After the tyranny of the British Crown, they feared a large standing army and instead entrusted citizen-soldiers — neighbors, coworkers, church members — to serve as our first line of defense and a check on federal power.

That’s why the Constitution gives Washington only a narrow power to federalize the Guard: to help execute Federal laws, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions. Madison emphasized that this design kept the militia “subservient to the states,” not to the federal government. In short, the National Guard was created to defend this country, its people, and its borders — not to serve as a permanent overseas expeditionary force.

Yet over the last two decades, the Guard has been routinely sent to fight undeclared wars thousands of miles away on missions that have little to do with repelling invasions or enforcing our laws at home. Congress used to understand the gravity of such decisions but now seems to have surrendered its war powers.

As James Madison said to Thomas Jefferson, “The Constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it. It has accordingly, with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature.” Since Congress will not reclaim its constitutional duty, the states have both the right and the responsibility to act.

The Montana Republican Party’s platform expresses that belief: “the Montana Army and Air National Guard should only be deployed for active combat operations outside the United States with authority from Article I Section 8 Clause 11 of the U.S. Constitution and Title 10 USC after Congress has exercised its enumerated power ‘to declare war.’”

That is exactly what the Defend the Guard Act does. The bill, which I have twice introduced at the legislature, simply requires that Congress do its constitutional duty and issue a declaration of war before deploying state guards to foreign combat zones

Republicans who are serious about supporting our troops and restoring constitutional government should begin by backing the restoration of the Guard to its original mission of defending our homeland.

On the National Guard’s 389th birthday, the best way to honor these men and women is with constitutional fidelity. Bring the Guard home to its rightful purpose — defending America, not policing the world.

Representative Lee Deming
House District 54

Published in Lee Enterprises newspapers, December 13, 2025
https://helenair.com/opinion/column/article_b756ab45-2829-5fbb-93ca-919a174c8f34.html