Episode 57: The US Constitution with Nathan Sauerbier

September 20th, 2024 /
Alexander Glaves /

Sup with the Sup

00:00 / 39:25

Welcome everyone to the next episode of Provo City School District’s What’s Up With The Sup’ podcast. I am Superintendent Wendy Dau, and I am excited about the podcast this week. But as always, let’s go over the updates.

The Utah State Board of Education, Child Nutrition Programs, and Utah Food Bank have announced a new criteria for determining eligibility for the Emergency Food Assistance program and it is a federal program that helps supplement the diets of low income Americans by providing them with emergency food assistance at no cost.
- Income eligibility guidelines are effective from July 1st through June 30th every year and automatic eligibility is given to clients who currently participate in one of the following programs:
  - SNAP, which stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program;
  - Medicaid;
  - free or reduced price school meal benefits, so if your child is on free or reduced lunch, you would automatically qualify;
  - or if you have a child that’s enrolled in the federal Head Start program.
- Please check our district website for more information and for where you can obtain this emergency food assistance.
The month of September is American Founders Month and Constitution Month. Our Teaching and Learning Department has provided our schools with materials for teachers to use to help our students learn and talk about the Constitution and our incredible form of government.
The next school board meeting will be an all day meeting on Friday, September 27th.
- The meeting will be held in the Grandview Technology Center. Look for more details to be shared as the date approaches.
The Board of Education is currently crafting a new policy on cell phones that will align with proposed state legislation.
- The survey has been sent to families to get your feedback on how we can support our students and teachers in creating productive learning environments free from distractions.
- Students and teachers are also encouraged to complete the survey. Please check your email or visit the district website to access the survey.
Continue watching for my weekly videocasts in your email every Monday morning. These videocasts provide one place for you to learn about important things happening across the district.
The Foundation’s Links for Kids Golf Tournament will be held on September 26th at the Timpanogos Golf Club.
- Proceeds from the tournament are used to support after school programs and to provide teacher grants for innovative projects in their classrooms.
- If you are interested in participating and putting together a team, please visit foundation.provo.edu.
- A team of four costs $1,500, and since I will be on a team, you can better believe that I will be in last place, so there is no shame attached to this.
The 20th annual Walk for Hope at Timpanogos Elementary is in Provo on Saturday, September 28th at 9 a.m.
- The walk for hope in conjunction with hope for Utah is an event to promote suicide awareness and prevention, as well as support for those who have been affected by suicide loss.

And now onto our guest, Nathan Sauerbier.

I’m here today with our guest, Nathan Sauerbier, who is a world history teacher at Provo High School. So welcome to our podcast.

Nathan Sauerbier: Thank you for having me.

Wendy Dau: So this month is American Founders Month and we have Constitution Day on September 17th. I’m a former U. S. history teacher, so I love this kind of stuff. Like some people just can’t get into this and I can’t get enough of it.

So thank you for being willing to be on our show and to just talk with us about the Constitution because I think we’re going to come at it from a really interesting way that might be a little less traditional.

Nathan Sauerbier: Yeah, absolutely.

Wendy Dau: Yeah, it’ll be great. So you teach world history, so talk to us about some of the world events that were taking place almost at kind of at the same time or leading up to the Constitution that really had an impact that maybe our students or maybe people are not even aware of that these were global conversations.

Right now we’re happening.

Nathan Sauerbier: Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, specifically to the Constitution itself, a lot of folks like to trace its ancestry back to the Magna Carta in 1215. Right. So King John and the barons being upset with their perceived rights being trampled upon. And the idea that the king as a monarch, despite either divine right theory or anything else, it’s going to come out shortly after that time period, is still subject to law, that they’re a man, they’re a person, a human, and therefore not above, uh, written law. And you could even go further back in time, and we look at the foundings of our country and how they’re based on, for example, the Roman Republic. We can really see the roots of what the American system becomes back to the ancients.

Whether it’s the Greeks with their democracy, the Romans and the Republican form of government and how the Romans had prided themselves on being governed by laws and not men, which is true for a fair bit of the Republic. Maybe not so much after the second century.

Wendy Dau: Maybe, maybe not so much then.

Nathan Sauerbier: Yes, with Sulla and things like that.

That kind of goes out the window. But at the time when the trends and forces in the world that are acting and we see the establishment of a document like that, it’s right in the heart of the enlightenment and the enlightenment is this really, really cool, interesting time period, at least in Western civilization, where they’re starting to ask those questions, right?

We’ve come out of the renaissance, we’ve had all these other factors that have kind of this perfect storm in a historical context that get us there and they start kind of asking why, why does the king get to do things this way? Why does the, you know? The church in the case of either the Catholic Church, then shortly later, we had the Protestant Reformation.

Why do they have certain controls over aspects of society? And a lot of people start to challenge that concept. And so I think the final, you know, proverbial straw here is that we have the scientific revolution. And so instead of just asking like, okay, how about the laws of nature and the world around us?

What if we start applying the scientific method to how we govern ourselves and how we interact with one another? And all of that comes together. You have the coffee houses and stuff across Europe where it’s weird to think that history can be associated with a beverage, but they’ll use this as an excuse to sit down and have these like high minded intellectual conversations, sometimes away from listening ears of-

Wendy Dau: Right.

Nathan Sauerbier: Of the monarchy, or depending on where you are.

Wendy Dau: Government officials. Yes.

Nathan Sauerbier: Yes. Yes. Yes. Unfortunately, they’re in our phones today. Um. So they’re having these conversations behind closed doors, whether it’s for the idea of what a monarchy may not see as desirable if their people want to break away or find other ways and avenues to pursue rights and liberties.

But the people in these coffee houses start to develop these new theories of government. They, they start asking those questions and we start to see those come into fruition with. Again, the biggest and one of the greatest experiments, at least in political science, the creation of the United States, and I try to stay away from American exceptionalism in my classroom.

I like to ground us, but at the end of the day, it really is a unique case on the world stage. And I do remind my students from a world history perspective, it’s the first government ever created purely based on enlightenment principles from the get go from day one, a lot of you look at the constitutional monarchies and stuff that we see in Europe today, they are amended by things like the enlightenment.

The United States was started with it started, and it’s the first one that does it.

Wendy Dau: Tell us a little bit about some of the enlightened philosophers and maybe some of the direct impact that they had on the Constitution, because we’ll hear people quote them all the time. And I think it’s important that we’re understanding those connections.

Nathan Sauerbier: Right. So John Locke. Kind of is a English thinker that grows up during the Glorious Revolution. Um, and so for those that don’t know the Glorious Revolution in 1689, the British replaced their monarchy bloodlessly. Nobody dies. You compare that to how they treated Charles not too long before that, where they cut, yeah, they cut his head off, right?

A lot, a lot less bloody. And he’s often juxtaposed with like Thomas Hobbes. That’s where I was getting at and Hobbes grows up during the chaos of the English civil war. And he feels that humans need the strong paternal king like figure in society while Locke and sees kind of the better side and that humans are capable of self governance.

I often like to tell the kids about the, you know, the, the shopping cart test is a litmus test for self governance. Do you return the buggy because you’re supposed to, there’s no punishment for leaving it out in the aisle. Other than you being a maniacal human being and denting people’s cars, but there’s no punishment.

There’s no, there’s no shopping cart police. You don’t get fined, but, and there’s no reward for returning the cart. Are you capable of self governance? And I tell them next time you go to Smith’s or whatever, go, go people watch. It’s quite interesting. Humans are odd creatures. And so Locke’s ideas that we as humans are capable of self governance and self regulation are heavily prized by the people who found this country and who will eventually be the framers of the Constitution, as well as people like Thomas Paine, my wife’s favorite, right?

She was a U. S. history teacher, and she will go on and on about Thomas Paine and the kind of historical comedy. You know, he was a Brit who became an American and was very proud of it. Right. And Common Sense is his texts that definitely inspire a lot. So those are, those are two big names and there’s many others that we could, we could really get into.

Those are the two probably most prominent that are going to show up. And then you’ve got Montesquieu with his, his divided powers and stuff like that. So you can kind of tease all of those elements of those philosophers. I like to do this experiment in class where I force them to pick one or the other and it gets them actually pretty heated arguments, especially with the AP kids, they get fired up.

But then we remind them that in reality, you don’t have to just pick one or the other. You can choose from each of these philosophers to build the government that you see fit. And that’s what happens in the 1770s. And then unfortunately, the Articles of Confederation were a little too weak for our liking.

And so we get the constitution that we have in 1789 as a result.

Wendy Dau: And one of the things that I think is interesting, you mentioned the Glorious Revolution, and I’m reaching way back into some of my history classes. So you’re gonna have to correct me if I’m wrong in this. But if I’m remembering correctly, at that time, there became these limits kind of placed on the king’s power and through Parliament, right?

Nathan Sauerbier: Parliament passes the English Bill of Rights, right? And so they, you know, the idea that freedom of the press and that it used to be that if you, even after this, unfortunately, it won’t be a full freedom of the press because there will be writers after who criticized King George the Third, and they get jailed.

It’s an instant jail. You go to you, you make fun of the king, you go to jail, right? And despite being the mad king as he gets known as. So yes, the glorious revolution definitely introduces a lot of these concepts, at least in British society. And some of that is going to translate over to the Americas, especially with more parliamentary representation, which is going to get us to where we’re going to eventually have that revolution. That’s going to be one of the big sticking points for American colonists at the time.

Wendy Dau: Let’s explore that a little bit. So you know, you hear the phrase all the time, no taxation without representation. Talk a little bit about maybe the origin of that and where that’s coming from and how that impacted how our constitution was formulated.

Nathan Sauerbier: Other than being a conveniently, catchy, slogan.

Wendy Dau: It is so catchy.

Nathan Sauerbier: It’s just transcended centuries because I grew up learning that as a kid.

Wendy Dau: Yes, yes, absolutely.

Nathan Sauerbier: And so parliament, the way it worked is not necessarily all counties or segments of England got parliamentary representation, but the idea behind it started to be as time progresses, especially after 1689, you start to see a lot more representation.

And so the idea that you have a monarch and it’s balanced with the parliamentary power to pass laws. And so the king kind of loses the authority to pass legislation.

Wendy Dau: Right.

Nathan Sauerbier: And the idea was that you could send members to parliament to represent you as a representative form of government. The colonists, because they’re not officially part of Britain, they’re not awarded that, I guess, pleasure as it would be, but they are still considered British subjects.

If we, in reality, if we look back, we actually kinda threw a hissy fit considering we got taxed way less than the people living in Britain. At the time. Many people don’t know that. Yeah. Everyone forgets that we, we threw a hissy fit over like a two or 3 percent tax, right? Which, you know, we look at our paychecks today, it’s definitely not the same.

Wendy Dau: No.

Nathan Sauerbier: But because of that lack of representation, that becomes one of the big sticking points in slogans of the early revolution and that the American revolution as an ideological idea and the war for independence are in reality two different things and the US as it’s going to become was already having its own authority to a degree due to the separation of distance at the time, right?

They don’t have a phone in the 1700s to pick up and say, this is how we want you to run things in the colony today. They had to be given some level of autonomy. And they had to be given the ability to tax their local folks who are living in these colonies would pay a tax to one of the colonial governments in order to maintain their roads and a militia and things like that.

So they already had almost a century and a half of self regulation and self government to agree before the revolution even starts.

Wendy Dau: Well, and this is where that argument of virtual representation comes in. Well, virtually every parliamentary member represents every British subject. They’re like, no, I don’t buy that.

And you see that then kind of play out in the Constitution. When you start seeing in the House of Representatives, no, you’re, this representative is actually representing a fixed number of people.

Nathan Sauerbier: Right.

Wendy Dau: And I feel like there’s a connection there where they’re trying to say, we disagree with how that was set up.

And so we’re making a very different statement with what representation looks like in the Constitution.

Nathan Sauerbier: That’s why we have a Bicameral legislature, right? Yeah. Each state gets two senators and they have a portion of power and that was a provision that was given in the Constitution itself because it gave smaller states like, you know, Rhode Island and stuff like that a chance to actually matter.

Otherwise they wouldn’t have ratified it.

Wendy Dau: Right.

Nathan Sauerbier: So those were concessions actually given to allow these smaller popular. Otherwise, you know, New York would have pretty much run everything at the time because they were one of the most populous colonies.

Wendy Dau: Yep, that’s exactly right. Tell us a little bit about how the Constitution, uh, looks in terms of the government that it establishes versus as we look at newer republics, for example, what are some of the differences that are coming out?

And what are some of the things that people have kept from the Constitution. We’re like, these are principles that we need to make sure that we have and where are the areas where they’ve changed some things because they’re like, uh, maybe that wasn’t clear enough or notice how this has created some tension here as people are debating maybe what something means or how it should be carried out.

Talk a little bit about that.

Nathan Sauerbier: I think in some of the more recently established ones, at least those in the, in the 20th century, you see a stronger centralized authority, right? So we have states and these states have the ability to pass laws. And it gets really complicated with our Constitution because we have like the supremacy idea that federal law is the most supreme law on the land.

But if you look at hot button topics, around the country today, those are being left to the states to decide and what is necessary, right? For the federal government to exercise. And so when you look at more modern democracies or republics that get established, I feel like we see a more centralized establishment as in what would be equivalent to like a federal government that we have.

They have more authority and power and the states or prefectures, if you’re like in Japan or something like that. They have more, “we maintain the running of things at the end of the day,” the federal government is still making big decisions and you’re not going to see as much decentralization like we have in our own country today.

And part of that is a cultural concept. Right. And the, the way our country was established and built over time, you also see provisions and certain rights. So, you know, we have the third amendment, which I don’t think has ever been enacted, which is the no garrisoning or quartering of troops in times of war.

Thankfully, the United States hasn’t seen major military incursions into its, you know, actual home territories. And so that hasn’t necessarily been a thing. So some constitutions don’t even mention that because whether it’s a cultural component where they feel like they may need to do that anyway, or it’s just kind of never been necessary from a US perspective, some don’t have it or not to get into too sticky of a topic, right? The Second Amendment, which is a huge debate. The United States has had a culture and an identity tied to the Second Amendment for centuries. And even before its establishment, when, and other nations that have gone through either, you know, the defeated nations of the Second World War, when we installed democracies there, they don’t necessarily have the same perception or cultural ties to such a thing.

Wendy Dau: That’s an excellent point. I think too, what role do you think it plays that the size of the United States now recognizing that when it was formed, it was very small. But when you think about states being more in other countries, maybe they just administer the law and they’re just carrying it out at the local level.

Whereas here, there are many things that they’re very independent. And in terms of how they’re running things, which is why we get such variation from state to state, does the preservation of that have anything to do with the size of the United States or just the different cultural makeup of the United States?

What is your interpretation of that when you’re thinking about other countries?

Nathan Sauerbier: So if we look at it from our perspective, that kind of goes back to the Articles of Confederation, because in reality, it was 13 independent colonies that were on their own crown charter, and they came together to work together, so they had their own interests, and at the Constitutional Convention and stuff like that, where the idea of the state being a somewhat independent, autonomous, being as it were, if we think about this as a kind of on a macro level, we kept it, right?

So the Articles of Confederation were weak and it gave a, we had, we were so concerned about a centralized authority that they were so bad that Congress goes broke within the first couple of years. We have Shay’s Rebellion. It’s a bit of a mess and they’re kind of like, Oh, we probably should give the federal government a little bit more power to actually get things done.

Otherwise, we’re just gonna be this loose confederation of autonomous states. And so we introduced the constitution to fix that problem. And so I think in terms of us and our founding. And also, part of the way you mentioned how we expand, it’s kind of there from day one. It’s a, it’s a necessary component.

And yes, the US is vast and has had a unique founding compared to most other nations because it’s part of the colonial era too, where this nation is getting established versus countries that will come together like Germany or, or France that have been around for a while, or at least as a culture, because, you know, Germany doesn’t get formed until the 19th century.

Uh, at least as a state, they’re able to do that a little later, and they already had kind of pre established borders and ways that they were doing things versus if you look at Utah or any of the other Western states where, hey, there’s really nobody living out there, small groups of people, indigenous peoples that are living out there, so they, they had to figure out how to establish these provisional governments, and then they start to either emulate or mimic the ones on the East Coast.

And so you, you just see this, well, that’s how we’ve been doing it for the last hundred years. Well, that’s how we’re going to do it here.

Wendy Dau: We’re going to keep doing it that way. Tell me, how do you help them understand really that other countries are so different? What are some of the other countries that you use as examples and which countries might be more similar to us and which ones are very different?

Just to give us kind of that perspective.

Nathan Sauerbier: Yeah. So it’s probably a more difficult question to answer because we don’t necessarily look at it through that lens as it were, we can play if we were to look at it through that lens, we like to compare ourselves, at least in the modern age, we look at a lot of other Western countries at the end of the day.

The Western nations are very similar in how they’re established, whether that’s the British, the French, modern Germany, Canada, Mexico has a federal and a state system, right? So our neighbors are very similar to our own. But if we compare that to nations that may claim to be democratic peoples of something, we do do a fair bit of juxtaposition with the establishment of dictatorial communist states, especially the Soviet Union, which will then with Russia today, we’re really up against the clock at the end of the year, especially at an AP course, because we’re trying to get ready for that exam.

And so a lot of it’s like, hey, here’s a lot of stuff really fast. And so we don’t really get a whole lot of a chance to look at modern states that have, and I’m using air quotes for those who can’t see, elections, where, oh wow, Vladimir Putin won again, crazy.

Wendy Dau: Yeah, oh wow, that’s so weird.

Nathan Sauerbier: Yeah, oh wait, Kim Jong Un was elected again as Supreme Leader of North Korea?

I would have never guessed. It’s hard to find exact parallels and we also but we do compare it to the establishment of democracies in South America So that is something we definitely do in terms of the long view because the latin wars for independence that take place in the 1830s are going to be inspired by the American Revolution and the French Revolution and they’re going to be super inspired by that and they try to establish similar democracies, uh, and republics in Latin America, but they run into problems very quickly.

South America is not known for its stability, whether that is due to internal issues or meddling by foreign nations. No, totally not us. We would never, we would never do that. Um, and how they run into these issues. And part of that has to do with the fact that they didn’t get the 150 year training wheel cycle that the United States got with Britain still kind of holding us upright and maintaining things that way by the time we were ready to ride on our own we had a hundred and fifty years of somewhat practice while the Latin American countries are running into issues and there are still problems there I mean look at Venezuela.

Wendy Dau: Yeah, right, right What about, um, what influence like when we’re when we’re dealing with a country, say, for example, that we’re trying to support as they’re coming out of maybe a more dictatorial type of government or trying to move them like I’m thinking about when we invaded Iraq, and we’re trying to help them move into a more positive direction.

What types of things are we pulling from our government to try to help? And what problems do we run into when we do that? When we try to take our form of government and kind of transpose it onto somebody else? Because we noticed that that it’s problematic.

Nathan Sauerbier: Yeah, that’s a great question. Because that is a that is a modern geopolitical issue that we it’s time and time again and an unfortunate recurring story on the world stage. And so with the example of Iraq, it turns out American democracy and our form of a republic that we have is not compatible with everybody’s cultural predispositions. And I think as Americans, we often think we know what’s best for other people. And that’s a form of hubris that I wish we would get away from on the world stage.

Sometimes the way we do things here in America is not going to work in those parts of the world because of long standing religious and a role division that happens. You can’t go into a country like Afghanistan, where men have run things for millennia and then tell them that women have the right to vote and expect it to go well initially.

Wendy Dau: Right.

Nathan Sauerbier: Right. And the amount of handholding that is going to be required is financially not feasible. And you could also argue from a different perspective. It’s not our job to go in and tell these people how to live their lives. And I, it’s, it’s a complicated question. And it’s a complicated answer because you’re going to upset someone, no matter which way you answer it.

If we play devil’s advocate, I could sit here and say, hey, look, the West is the best. And this is how everybody should live their lives. At the same time. Would you want a foreign country to invade ours, come in and tell us how to live our lives and change the way we do things because you’re not going to take that very nicely.

And so I think it’s a little unfair to sit here and impose American ideals in a place where they may not fit.

Wendy Dau: Well, and I think too, to your point where. You’re trying to balance where you’re like, Well, I think this is the right thing to do is to help, you know, establish greater rights and greater freedoms for individuals.

But to your point, if in doing so, you’re disrupting a culture to such a great degree that it, that it creates so much bloodshed, then are we really doing what’s in the best interest? It’s a very difficult, like, I don’t envy all of the people that are making those decisions because that’s a very tricky thing.

I just sit back sometimes and I think I’m really grateful for where I live. This is really awesome that I ended up in the United States. I feel very fortunate. Right. But I think we sometimes try to oversimplify what’s happening. Like, well, this worked for us. So it obviously is going to work for you. And to your point that there’s a lot of arrogance.

That comes with that. We certainly want to be helpful, but that’s different than coming in and saying, do it our way because we’re the best.

Nathan Sauerbier: It needs to be an organic process to come in. Because if you look at, you know, we’ll use the Iraq example again. You have a strong man government under Saddam Hussein, you know, say what you want about him.

You know, he’s definitely obviously not the nicest guy in world history. He did maintain stability and order. In that nation and we killed him. Yeah. And as a result of what is left is, is a mess and Iraq is still a mess. Uh, they, and they obviously don’t want us there because we just renewed a mission with the Iraqis and they already want us out less than a year into the deal with when you destabilize parts of the world.

Uh, the Arab spring in 2011 is this really just unique event in world history. And a lot of it has to do with modern technology, like Facebook. It’s, you know, I know the kids today are more on Instagram and we say Facebook. We date ourselves.

Wendy Dau: Yes, we do.

Nathan Sauerbier: It’s like, Oh, you’re on Facebook. It is quite comical.

Wendy Dau: Nobody, nobody uses Facebook anymore. And that’s like-

Nathan Sauerbier: but in 2011-

Wendy Dau: it was awesome.

Nathan Sauerbier: Yeah, it was a big, it was a big deal back in the day and the idea, but viral spreading of video and media is definitely still a changing force. And we’ve only really seen that for the last decade and a half, maybe, um, but it takes the, the North Africa and the Middle East by storm in 2011.

And you get things like the Libyan revolutions and stuff like that, where now because of the power vacuum, we will see the advent of organizations like ISIS and other terror groups that are going to take advantage of a power vacuum, right? Again, Muammar Gaddafi, not a great individual, not a nice guy.

Maintained order some order instability, right? So all of these strongman dictators establish themselves in North Africa and in the Middle East and all of a sudden they get deposed. And the chaos that has followed has been a bloody one and change is sometimes a bloody process in world history the Syrian Civil War is getting another kickstart right now as we’re sitting here on this couch.

It is a sad and terrifying concept and we don’t know the extent of what that change will bring. The beauty of hindsight and the gift that it is we can look back at things like the United States and go well that War of Independence landed us here and here we are today. We don’t know what Syria is going to look like in 20 years.

Wendy Dau: That’s right. Well and I think to your point where you referred to almost this colonial era as like the training wheels of of learning this process of self government and and how to how to balance all of the different responsibilities and powers and rights and different aspects of the colonies themselves.

When you have a vast revolution like that, like, yes, the American Revolution happened in a short time period, but it really had been building for quite some time and there had been this expertise that had been developed and there’s lots of-

Nathan Sauerbier: social and cultural underlying mechanics necessary to make that the end state end up the way it was versus continued shambles.

If you don’t have a culture or a history or a cultural shared idea of individual liberties and rights where you’ve had strong arm dictators or empires for a very long time, the people that live there in reality sometimes don’t know what to do with that freedom.

Wendy Dau: That’s right.

Nathan Sauerbier: And they’re used to being told what to do, when to do it and how to do it.

And then you pull the rug out from under them and go, okay, now figure it out on your own. In some cases they, they run into issues. The unfortunate and unintended casualty of this are the innocent people who just want to live their lives like you and I, but there’s a power vacuum, and if nobody is there to kind of make sure the kids are on opposite sides of the playground and not fighting, bloodshed follows.

And it is a kind of a sad trope we’ve seen, and the United States interventionalism may have not had the ideas that we thought it was going to be. The global war on terror may have created more problems than it solved.

Wendy Dau: Right.

Nathan Sauerbier: Which is kind of ironic of the day we’re talking about this, right? We are having this on September 11th, right?

That whole process started that those years ago with the 9/11 attacks and our involvement, increased involvement on the world stage.

Wendy Dau: That’s right. Tell me a little bit about how you address the Constitution’s role in shaping contemporary debates about governance or individual rights or unity. I know you’re teaching world history, but kids are always going to be asking questions about what’s taking place in the country right now.

And so how do you talk about those kinds of things in your classroom? And also, how are you talking about those kinds of things and, and really enriching the conversation while creating really safe spaces for kids to express, you know, or ask those questions? What does that look like?

Nathan Sauerbier: Whether it’s in class, we find a way to tie it to a lesson or we do have a club at Provo High, the Blazer Club.

Wendy Dau: Oh, yes. Yes.

Nathan Sauerbier: So that’s kind of a space where those kids come in and we talk about things like this. It’s a delicate approach because I do my utmost to remain apolitical in my class. And I feel that my political beliefs, my religious beliefs, whatever they may be, have no place in the classroom, I don’t want to influence children one way or the other that I encourage them to be independent and free thinkers.

I think I kind of made a joke earlier this year that somebody kind of took out of context in our social studies. Everyone’s kind of dumb, but I I didn’t get to finish my thought. I tell them be the generation that goes and fixes it. You should be actively participating because I always give them that little eyeball moment of like, hey.

Most because I teach sophomores, you guys are 15, 16 years old, two, three years. You’re going to be voting. And for some of them, that’s a bit of a reality check. Like I don’t care who you vote for. I don’t care what your political beliefs are. I want you out there participating in our system because not to get too doom and gloom, but our system needs a lot of work right now.

If you’ve been watching the news, it is a turbulent time, especially with this upcoming election. And I asked them, I beseeched them. Be independent thinkers. Think for yourself. Don’t be afraid to ask why. Be careful what you see on social media because it is often skewed and you can quickly find yourself in an echo chamber on social media today and reinforce your thoughts and get more entrenched and polarized.

And we try to bring it back that, you know, the Constitution is kind of there as a, as a framework and a guide to maybe help us navigate these tumultuous times of, you know, that’s why we have things like the Supreme Court to come in and say, hey, federal government, state government, whomever, uh, you can’t do that.

That’s unconstitutional. And that is there to protect us as citizens. I feel like some agencies have gotten a little too big for their breeches and thankfully with the passing of Chevron, the removal of that in the, in the last calendar year is huge for us as Americans, because it does limit these agencies that are making policy decisions who that’s not under the purview of the executive branch.

Your job is to not interpret. Your job is to enforce. That’s right. You don’t get to sit there and change rules, whether you’re the B. A. T. F. You’re the E. P. A. Whoever. That’s not your role. That is the judicial branch’s role and please leave it to them. And so I am hopeful in the idea that we’re still being reminded that the Constitution is an important concept and that these kids grow up knowing that this is important because that will hopefully influence their voting decisions to choose candidates regardless of political ideology.

That want to remain true to what the American system is supposed to be and try to keep us on that path and it’s, you know, maybe 200 students that come through my classroom in a year. It’s it’s a drop in the bucket, but maybe it’s something.

Wendy Dau: But that’s 200 students every single year. That’s gonna that’s thousands of students over your career.

And I think it’s important for them to start thinking about how you’re framing that is think about candidates that are helping us to ensure that that Constitution is being upheld, right? And that people are understanding why it’s set up the way that it’s set up, why there are the different checks and balances that have been put in place.

We need that, that like, it’s very purposeful and that people that are trying to support it. Undo that or do workarounds or things those are the things that become threatening.

Nathan Sauerbier: And it’s making sure that the students have the the independent thinking skills to sit there and go. Oh that doesn’t seem like that’s right.

You know, both political parties are guilty of doing it, this is again and a we try to remain as objective as we can, and I think that’s important as educators, especially with the amount of fire that educators are getting nowadays, with the ideas and the claims that we’re trying to indoctrinate children. If anything, I’m doing the entire opposite of, hey, think for yourself, man, don’t listen to what everybody says.

And don’t be afraid to question me because I’ll tell them I know a fair bit. I have some degrees in this or that, but I don’t know everything. I’ll be the first one to tell you that I’m wrong or I was incorrect.

Wendy Dau: Right. The U. S. Constitution is one of the longest surviving written constitutions in the world.

So why do you feel like it has endured for so long?

Nathan Sauerbier: It is set up to be an organic document, and I think the original 10 should be unmovable because I feel like those are basic rights for we as American citizens.

Wendy Dau: And you’re referring to the 10 amendments, the Bill of Rights.

Nathan Sauerbier: Correct, the first 10 amendments.

Wendy Dau: I just want to make you and I know what you’re talking about.

I don’t know if everybody knows that.

Nathan Sauerbier: Yes, the first ten amendments are often referred to as the Bill of Rights. These were the concessions that got all states on board because when they originally did this, if I’m not mistaken, it was 100 percent ratification was needed to make this a reality. Nowadays, three fourths of states, if I’m not mistaken, are required to, you know, I’m not endorsed to teach, uh, gov, but that’s, uh-

Wendy Dau: You’re correct.

Nathan Sauerbier: Yeah, but yeah, three fourths are required for an amendment to be ratified today. And I think it is established to be flexible for the times. And I think that has allowed it to succeed because we’ve been able to add things like the 13th and 14th amendments to enfranchise more Americans and to, to abolish things like slavery.

And to grant people the right to vote and to be, to brought in, we, we passed the 19th amendment and 1920 grant women’s suffrage. Um, and so that’s why we’ve been able to keep this form of government as I, if I’m not mistaken, we are the longest standing single form of government that hasn’t really been altered.

Wendy Dau: Right.

Nathan Sauerbier: I believe in in world history in terms of a we’ve been doing this for this long.

Wendy Dau: That’s was- yeah, that’s my understanding, too.

Nathan Sauerbier: We have this bicameral legislature. We have a president. We have all these things. We’ve made, but we’ve made modifications to suit our needs within reason and at a three fourth’s majority. So if anything is going to change, it’s, you know, if we think that political parties are perfectly 50 50, which they’re not.

But if we assume that is to be true, You need at least half of the other side of the aisle, so to speak, to agree. So that’s probably going to benefit most of us. And so we’ve been able to adapt. And I think that’s, what’s going to hopefully give us continued longevity of such a document.

Wendy Dau: Well, and I, I think it’s interesting that sometimes you hear individuals talk about how much the constitution has been amended and then other people who say, well, it hasn’t been amended.

That much for as long as it has been an operation. And you think about you don’t want it to be easy to amend. Like if you want to have that stability, that is why it’s as difficult as it is, because you do want to make sure that a majority of the Americans, not just the majority of the party that’s in power, believe that this is the right thing, but it truly is across the entire nation.

That becomes really an important piece of, of modifying our form of government. And it should be difficult to do.

Nathan Sauerbier: Too flexible and we run into issues where you may have a runaway issue where, okay, well, now that this one political parties in power-

Wendy Dau: Here we go.

Nathan Sauerbier: They’re going to undo everything of the last four years of a previous administration, which is a bit of the ebb and flow and the pendulum swinging of US politics, but there are checks and balances right back to the enlightenment, right, to make sure that we don’t have issues and that whole system was stress tested in 1861.

Wendy Dau: Yes.

Nathan Sauerbier: Right. We go through the ultimate stress test and we come out on the other side. Right now i’m a southerner by birth. And so some people I know still call it the war of northern aggression. But we come out despite the issues and the hard fought lessons, we survive.

Wendy Dau: Yeah.

Nathan Sauerbier: Right. The stress test, we pass.

Wendy Dau: Yeah.

Nathan Sauerbier: It’s not, it’s a little rocky start. Reconstruction has mixed reviews, right? Especially growing up outside of Atlanta, where they burned down my state. Thanks Sherman.

Wendy Dau: Right.

Nathan Sauerbier: Yeah, they do not. It’s a dirty word.

Wendy Dau: Yeah, I’m sure it is.

Nathan Sauerbier: Do not mention General Sherman, but we, again, we come out long, you know, long view, we step back and we go, okay, this, this process, this process, this process, we’ve survived.

And part of that is due to the flexibility of such a document and the system that’s built around it is designed to be resilient. It’s a testament to the systems in place. That you can shake off either a inefficient administration or political instability for a period of time, or even a full on civil war that we experienced in 1861, we survive. And I think it is, it is a unique document to have done that because civil wars sometimes get protracted and could become far worse and you may not see a similar government come out on the other side for either side, whoever wins or loses.

Wendy Dau: I agree it can result in ultimate destruction at that point in kind of chaos. Well, you’ve made me think about a lot as we’re thinking about this month in terms of how fortunate we are to have the form of government that we do, and that it also provides a lot of hope, even in turbulent times that I really do believe the United States will get through whatever it is that we need to get through.

And hopefully we just become better people. Like I really do believe we can progress as a nation and keep getting better and better. I hope that keeps happening.

Nathan Sauerbier: Absolutely. I think we’re in for a very interesting election season.

Wendy Dau: I think so too.

Nathan Sauerbier: I think everybody’s well aware of that, but I too remain hopeful that despite whatever happens in November and potential follow on events, I think at the end of the day, the United States is going to survive in the form that it still is.

It may go through some issues. It may go through some more growing pains as it has throughout its existence. But I also remain hopeful that we still come out on top as as we are now and we continue that.

Wendy Dau: And I think our constitution will play a very big role in ensuring that.

Nathan Sauerbier: It is going to be hopefully the guide that we continue to follow because it’s led us pretty well thus far.

Wendy Dau: I agree.

Nathan Sauerbier: Is it a perfect document? No, but is it has it been amended to make it more perfect? I think so.

Wendy Dau: Thank you so much.

Nathan Sauerbier: Thank you for having me.

Wendy Dau: This was really fun to talk with you about this. I don’t get to talk about history and government as much as I would love to, so this has been a real treat for me.

Nathan Sauerbier: And we did a great job keeping off the spicy topics.

Wendy Dau: Yes, we did. We did very well.

Nathan Sauerbier: But it may get us some more listeners.

Wendy Dau: It might. Maybe next time we might have to, yeah, we might have to get them fired up more next time. All right. Thank you so much.

Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of What’s Up With the Sup’. As always, all episodes will be posted on the district website, YouTube, and anywhere you get your podcasts. If you have any topics or questions you would like to discuss on the podcast, please email us at podcast.provo.edu. We will be back again next week with an all new episode of What’s Up With The Sup’.

Have a great weekend.