Ep. 93 – Wrapping Up the Constitution

We've learned an awful lot about the Constitution! In this episode, we're joined by Constitutional expert Clark Neily who breaks it down into the key themes and what we absolutely need to keep in mind.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Now this is the FCB Podcast Network. They're great US Solved for Jemmy,
and they thought so when we wantAmerica. Welcome back to the Growing Patriot

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podcast American History for Kids. I'myour host, Amelia Hamilton. Last week
we wrapped up the Bill of Rightsand that's where we're going to leave the
Constitution. There have been many moreamendments since then, but they really come
after the founding period. And atthis podcast we are all about the founding
but I know that the whole Constitutionand the Bill of Rights have taken us

(00:52):
months to get through and there wasso much to learn. So today we're
just going to do a little wrapup the things that we really need to
remember about the Constitution and the Billof Rights. I have a constitutional expert
joining us, so let's dig rightin. Hi. My name is Clark

(01:17):
Neely, and I am senior vicepresident for Legal Studies at the Cato Institute,
which is a think tank in Washington, DC. Who is Cato?
Why why is there something named forhim? Well, the Cato in this
case is not just one person.It's a group of people who produced a
body of work called Cato's Letters,which was correspondence that can place during founding

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area before the American Revolution, andessentially articulated a political philosophy that our country
would come to adopt. And theit boils down to the idea that the
most important entity in any given societyis the individual. So we as individual
human beings are the most important thing, not in the government. And that

(02:01):
was really a revolutionary idea because inmost societies up until that point, there
was some you know king or youknow warlord or or chief who took a
position that I am the most important. And then I created a society and
you serve me, and we turnedthat on its head. And so there
are a number of writings during thebounding are including Cato's letters, articulated this

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philosophy, and that's the one thatinspires both our Declaration of Independence and the
US Constitution. Cool, you guysare keeping that spirit alive today. I
love it all right. So wehave just wrapped up the Bill of Rights.
We talked about the tenth Amendment lastweek, so we are done with
with those, um you know,first ten. Of course, there are

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many more amendments, but for theBill of Rights. So I just wanted
to kind of talk to you andwrap it all up. What are some
of the big themes that we shouldtake from, you know, the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights, youknow, going forward in our lives.
Well, I think the most importantthing to keep in mind is that the
Constitution is a kind of a ruler, and it sets forth the ways that

(03:07):
government can legitimately operate. Um.You know, in some ways, the
simplest way to run a government isjust to have one person in charge and
then they everything they say becomes thelaw, and every decision they made ends
up being implemented, whether it's justor unjust, fair or unfair. Another
way to run a government is,what's hold a pure democracy, so that

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you just people get together, theyvote on any given policy, and then
whatever the majority says that becomes topolicy. And it turns out that there
are real problems with each of thoseapproaches, and it essentially boils down to
um. There's a tendency both fromthe part of tyrants or you know,
autocrats, people who run the entirecountry, to act mostly in their own

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interests and not in the interests ofindividuals, and not to respect things like
individual rights, and the fact thatwe all have different preferences, different castes
and different ambitions and goals in life. And the problem with pure democracy is
similar in the sense that you canhave the tyranny of majorities. You can
have a bunch of people who gettogether and they prefer one policy, and

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then they just ram that down thethroat of everybody else, even people who
disagree. And so what our societytried to do and what our constitution sets
forward is a government that operates onthe basis of democracy and operates on the
basis of majorities deciding what the policieswill be, but within certain parameters,

(04:35):
within constraints that the government cannot exceedin. One example of that would be
freedom of speech. You have aright in America to go out and criticize
the government if you want to dothat. In many other countries, perhaps
most countries throughout history, you didnot have that right. And if you
go out and criticize the government insome countries today, so for example Turkey,
where people have been famously prosecuted andput in prison for simply criticizing the

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government'll guess what you're now permitted todo that in this country you have a
constitutional right to do it, evenif the majority of people disagree with you.
And even if the majority of peoplethink that it should be a criminal
offense for which they can put ina jail, guess what, they can't
do it. And the reason theycan't do it is because the Constitution says
that we all have a right offree speech and that that's one of those

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rules, one of those limits thatexist in the constitutions, but the government
has to respect even if the governmentdoesn't want to respect it. Yeah,
and you touched on another I thinkbig theme is the individual, you know,
being sovereign, being the king,you know, and that was something
that certainly that our founders had notexperienced as a colony, you know,

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and they knew they wanted to dosomething different. So why is the individual
so important in America? And howis that different? Yeah, I think
this is a really important point tounderstore the fact that both the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution really stand forthe proposition that individuals have individual or worth,
the individual autonomy that means we getto make decisions about what we want

(06:03):
to get out of life and howto go about it. That doesn't mean
that society has to be inherently individualisticor atomistic, where everybody's thinking about themselves
all the time, and all youdo is try to get ahead, and
who cares about anybody else? Thatis not the idea whatsoever. On a
countrary, a French political theorists nameAlexis to total hid to America about forty

(06:26):
years after the founding of this country, and here remark, how remark,
how incredible it is an Americans spenda lot of time working together. That
we do things in groups. Youdo things in communities. We're members of
churches and rotary clubs and other kindsof organizations. But the point is this,
It's that the government doesn't get todictate to people how to live their
lives. It doesn't get to dictateto you what you have to do for

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a living, whether you have tobe a firm or a factory worker,
or a lawyer or a doctor,you have to get married to this person
and not this other person, etc. Etc. Those are choices that we
get to make for ourselves as wego through life. What doesn't mean,
again, that we have to livesome lonely, individualistic life where we never
work with other people, we neverhave families or communities. It simply means

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that we get to choose who's goingto be in our family. We get
to choose who is going to bein our community, who we want to
work with, who we don't wantto work with, we want to associate
with, who we don't. Ionly think that's the beauty of the American
project, is a respect for theability and the right of individuals to make
those decisions about their own life.And again, that doesn't mean you go
through life is some lonely island whereyou never associate with other people. On

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the contrary, America has some ofthe best communities of any country in history.
And one of the reasons for thatis that it's people who conside when
to get together and who to associatewith. The government doesn't get to go
around dictating those kinds of things fromindividuals. And I think there's something very
beautiful and money absolutely and that ideaof communities coming together you're rather than having

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things imposed on them, I thinkreally goes along with what you said about,
you know, not being a directdemocracy, about people working together,
and that was against something that theysaw, you know, being ruled by
a king who was an ocean away. It didn't work. You need to
talk to the people who are thereliving those experiences every day, And now
our country is even bigger, somuch more diverse. And that's why I

(08:22):
think things like the electoral college worksso well. You know, we did
in an episode about how that's youknow, actually a really fair way to
pick somebody to represent this big,crazy country with all these people. So
I like how it all ties together. Yeah, you know. One of
the things that keep in mind isto have a sense of humility about the
fact that there are always tradeoffs.So, for example, we had a

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pewer democracy, than people would havea bigger voice in how the country is
run. But the tradeoff would bethat a lot of people would then have
to live under policies that they don'tagree with they just happen to be an
a majority. So there really aretradeoffs. And as you want to mention,
some of the designs of our constitution, like the electoral college, like
separation of powers, like the processor enacting legislation, are specifically designed actually,

(09:07):
believe it or not too forward theinterests of fair political majorities. In
other words, to say to people, you know what, a fifty one
percent of the people support this policy, in forty nine percent of people oppose
this policy, then we're going tomake it really difficult for you fifty one
percent to rmded down the throats ofeverybody else. And I think one of
the most fascinating and profound insights aboutour Constitution and it is not truly a

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majority parient document. It is asuper majority carying document, by which I
mean the Constitution is designed in sucha way so that really major policy changes.
Again, the Constitution is not amajoritarian document. Who mind you,
it is a super liboritarian document.So when it's being applied correctly in order
to implement major policy changing, it'snot enough to have fifty one percent of

(09:54):
people. A constitution is designed insuch a way to make it very difficult
to implement major policies and message tohave really large percentage of people supporting them.
I think that's one of the waysin which the Supreme Court is most
failed to faithfully implement constitutional design isallowing many many things to be done on
the basis of fair majority support.In fact, those then should only be

(10:16):
done if they have supermajority support.Absolutely. Another big theme that we've been
talking about throughout this whole founding periodis compromise you know, through the framing
of the Constitution and writing the Billof Rights, really nobody, no one
person got just what they wanted,but you had to come up with something
that everybody could live with, whichis like you were talking about with It's
not just a majority, you know, you have to have something that works

(10:39):
for everyone. Yep. Now it'sexactly why I compromise is so important.
I mean, compromise is important whetheryou're just talking about a relationship with another
human being like a friend or aspouse. It's important when you're talking about
inside of a classroom, so thatyou know, people don't understand. You
can't just do whatever you want atany given timere are other people who have
other interests, and so we haveto talk fromise. And probably the biggest

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compromise that's reflected in the Constitution iswhether or not there should even be a
national government or a federal government,because up until the ratification of the US
Constitution in seventeen eighty eight, therewas no usaday. There was no federal
government, There was no national governmentacts that would go around ordering people to

(11:22):
do things. It was just thestates. In the states would sometimes agree
with each other, sometimes not likeyou would essentially the governing body for for
citizens would be not the federal government, but there wasn't one. It would
be the states. So on theonly hand you had people who thought there
should not be a federal government becausethere's no way to create one without essentially

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creating that kind of a Frankenstein's monster. There's incredibly powerful body that would almost
certainly start tyrannizing people, start violatingpeople's rights and preventing them from doing the
things that they want to do andliving the life the way they want to
live their life. The other endof the spectrum, there were people who
felt like, no, we absolutelydo need a federal government. It needs

(12:03):
to be really powerful. It shouldhave all the powers. And the compromise
that was worked out was that,yes, we will have a federal government,
but no, it will not haveevery power that you can imagine.
It will only have a few powers, like the ability to create an army,
the ability to have a national systemof weights and measures, and intellectual
property. But really just a fewthings. That was the compromise that was

(12:26):
worked out, and that is reflectedin the text of the Constitution. Unfortunately,
about one hundred and fifty years later, the Supreme Court decided it wasn't
important to respect that compromise anymore andjust basically said, you know, if
the other branches want to continue torespect that compromise, that's fine. If
they don't want to respect that compromise, that's fine too. It's could probably
guess and I strongly disagree with thatdecision on the part of Supreme Court.
I think it was one of thebiggest applications of responsibility that we've ever seen

(12:50):
from any branch of government. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court in the nineteen barries
just decided that it would no longerreally to make any serious efforts to enforce
this compromise. There was I thinka really smart one, and I think
we've paid a huge price for thefact that the branches of government, the
executive, of the legislative and thejudiciary no longer really respect that compromise.
That we will have a federal government, but it won't have very many powers.

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But another great thing about the waythat we are America is set up
is that we can fix it.It can take a lot of time and
a lot of persuasion, which is, you know, something that we saw
in you know, things like thefederalist papers. You know, they were
writing back and forth trying to persuadepeople. You know, so we can
we can fix things. But ittakes time. Yeah, it does.

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And I think one of the biggestproblems in our country is the judiciary.
I've been a constitutional lawyer in mywhole life. I revere the Constitution,
I love it. Unfortunately, Ithink that the judiciary has been insufficiently serious
about enforcing constitutional limits on government power. And my theory, and it is
just a theory, but my theoryis that one of the reasons for that
is that the federal judiciary, thebody of judges who are primarily responsible for

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enforcing their constitutions, actually are verysimilar to one another in a way that
almost no one has noticed. Andit's this. It's not that they all
went to the same school, it'snot all they all come from the the
same socioeconomic genographic Instead, the thingthat most unite federal judges is that a
wildly disproportionate number of them used torepresent the government in court before they become

(14:22):
judges. There a few lawyers,there's lots of lawyers in this country.
Very few of them ever represented thegovernment in court, but guess what among
judges, and wildly disproportionate number ofthem are drawn from that tiny percentage of
lawyers who used to represent the governmentof court. So I think what happened
is that so many federal judges wentfrom making arguments in favor of government power

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to deciding cases involving government power.And I think it's one of the reasons
why the federal judiciary has been,in my view, insufficiently committed to enforcing
constitutional limits on government power, whetherit's protecting our rights, which I think
the courts don't do as vigorously asthey should, or enforcing what we call
structural limits on government power, andfor example, enforcing that part of the

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Constitution, the tenth Amendment. Itsays that not very many powers are given
to the federal government. Most ofthose powers are given to the states and
should be exercised by the states.As we discussed, I think that the
US Supreme Court has been insufficiently committedto enforcing that constitutional structure, and unfortunately,
much to our cause, it resultsin a net loss of freedom.

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And I would say that we aresignificantly less free today in this country than
the Constitution means for us to do. Yeah, do you think our founders
would be surprised by that, Well, I think they'd be astonished. I
think they would be absolute. Ithink they'd be besides themselves when they if
they were able to come back andsee the sheer size of the federal government
and see all of the different thingsthat it involves itself, and keep in

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mind, the Constitution only gives thefederal government a very small number of powers
that are listed right there in thefirst kind of chapter of the Constitution,
Article one, and now basically thefederal government. It's almost you can't even
think of anything so trivial that thefederal government doesn't involve itself in that thing.
Now, again, reasonable people candisagree about whether that's a good idea

(16:15):
or a bad idea, that theConstitution was written in such a way to
make fear that the federal government hasno business whatsoever involving itself and go to
the small details of our lives,and yet it goes so anyway. So
yeah, I think the framers,the founders of this country who wrote or
framed to the Constitution, I thinkthey would be absolutely a fault what the

(16:36):
country looks like now. A lotof things I think they would be enthusiastic
about it. I think there aresome things that they would I think,
for example, most of them wouldbe very happy to don Nan should get
really slavery, which is the mostevil institution, arguing in the history of
a fine and certainly as institution inthe history of the United States. There
are many people in the founding erawho who rejected slavery as an institution.

(16:57):
They probably wouldn't just prise to knowthat we had to fight a bloody civil
war in order to do it,So I think that's something to make them
very happy. But I think theywould be absolutely a fold of the science
of the federal government. Yeah,and we talked a little bit last week
when we were talking about the tenthAmendment about how the way that things have
grown, you know, things thatare certainly not on the list, and

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one that really touches kids is schools. You know, certainly, nowhere in
the Constitution does it say that thefederal government in Washington, DC is going
to decide what happens every day whena kid goes to school. Yeah.
Now, that's right. And again, it's so important to keep us in
mind. It is a matter ofhumility. It's important for us to realize
that the Constitution doesn't necessarily look exactlythe way you would like it too.

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I'll give you an example. I'ma libertarian. That means I believe a
limited government and personal freedom. Iwould prefer that the federal government did not
have the power to collect an incometax. This is the tax that the
government takes some of the money toearn and spend it on things. And
one of the reasons for that isthe invasion of privacy. It's not just
the federal government to take the money, it's all of the questions that you

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have to answer, all the thingsthe federal government demands to know whether you've
had some medical problems that you're whetheror not you've done certain things as a
family that might tell them something abouthow things are going. It's just an
unbelievable amount of information you have toshare with the government so they can decide
how much you owe in taxes.I think that's incredibly objectionable. But guess
what. There is a part ofthe Constitution, the sixteenth Amendment that was

(18:26):
an actor in the early nineteen hundreds. There was no question it gives the
federal government this power. I stronglydisagree with that I think it was a
terrible idea. I think it wasa disaster that in humility, I do
have to acknowledge that it's in theirsame thing with a federal role in education.
Reasonable people can argue about whether itwould be a good idea or the

(18:47):
bad idea for the federal government tobe involved in perfect education. But one
thing that is absolutely clear is therenothing in the text of the Constitution that
remotely gives the federal governments the powerto involve itself in public education. And
it doesn't anyway, And that's anotherexample of what I described earlier about the
federal courts being insufficiently protected constitutional limitson government power. Again, the reasonable

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people can disagree about whether it's agood idea or a bad idea as a
policy matter, the federal government tobe involved in public education, but there
is not the slightest doubt that thereisn't a single word in the text of
the Constitution that remotely gives the federalgovernment the authority to involve itself in that
area. And the only only reasonit's allowed to do that, if it
just Congress pretends, is if there'sa role for the federal government, the

(19:32):
executive branch that's led by the presidentpretends as if there's a legitimate federal role,
and the judiciary pretends as if there'sa religion in the federal role in
pubnic education, but there's not.And the founders of this country may a
deliberate decision to withhold that power fromthe federal government. I think that was
a wise decision. Other people mightdisagree, but there's no real doubt about
what the decision was, and thedecision was the federal government doesn't cut its

(19:52):
power, and so the federal governmentexercises the power anyway, I would say
yes. And the ninth Amendment andtenth Amendment are kind of two sides of
the same point. Yeah, theninth Amendment says, just with personal freedoms,
even if it's not on the list, you shouldn't assume that it's not
a right that should be protected.And the tenth Amendment says for the government,

(20:14):
if it's not on the list,it is not their business. Yeah,
you think our founders would be surprisedhow many things we've kind of shifted
from the ninth of tenth how manypersonal freedoms we've kind of given to the
government. I think that they wouldbe mostly shocked about how much power the
federal government exercises. We talked aboutthat a moment ago. I think they

(20:34):
would be absolutely just made that theyhad expressed in such clear terms a commitment
to having a very small federal governmentleaving almost everything else to the states.
We've really flipped that around. SoI think that's the thing they would be
most surprised by. In terms ofthe protection of individual rights, I think
we are doing a better job there, and I think in many areas they

(20:55):
would see how things are now.For example, we talked earlier about the
ability to criticize the government bience,your freedom to speak. I think that
they would be I think they'd bevery reassured by how protective the courts have
been of that right and how willingpeople are to exercise that right. I
think, again I mentioned earlier,the elimination of slavery would be something I

(21:17):
think that most of them would bevery enthusiastic about, and the seriousness of
which the course enforced what's called theequal Protection Clause of the fourteenth Amendment,
which prohibits the government to making kindof arbitrary distinctions between people just on the
basis of things like race or gender, etc. So these are a few
things I think that most of thefoundaries will be quite enthusiastic about. But

(21:37):
on balance, I think that theywould be very disturbed about the amount of
power or the government exercises. I'lljust give you a quick illustration. I
don't know if those of you probablyhad babysitters before, but if your parents
are a babysitter, generally speaking,there's an understanding that babysitter really only has
a couple of jobs to keep you, say, maybe to feed you,
make sure you've got a book toread, or a movie to watch,

(21:59):
something like that. But imagining thatyour parents hired a babysitter and they had
that understanding, and suddenly your babysitteras you understanding of no, no,
no, I I think I havelots of other jobs I have. You
know, it's my job to takeyou on a trip around the world and
take you all the sites you know, and to expose you to every kind
of food in the world you know, and teach them a bunch of words
that you don't know, maybe includingsome bad words. Um. I think
your parents would be really dismayed todiscover that they had a babysitter who who

(22:22):
had such a misconception of their oftheir job. I think that's a good
comparison to the federal government. Federalgovernment is really only supposed to have a
free job, you know, makesure the country is protected, make sure
there's you know, a system ofuniform weights and measures and roads, and
just leave it at that. Butman, federal government just could not leave
it at that. Yeah, Andthat's that's a great example. I love

(22:42):
that parent babysitter example. And it'salmost like, you know, the parents
and that have just said, yeah, okay, babysitter, do what you
want, because you know, thepeople in a lot of ways have not
have not fought back. They've justlet the government take more power. Yeah.
Unfortunately, I think that's right.And again, you know, I
don't want to be a drum here, but part of the problem is that

(23:02):
we do have three branches of governmentthat we're designed to be, you know,
kind of intention with each other andto push back against each other.
And I do think that the branchof government that has the most clear responsibility
for limiting the other two is thejudiciary. And I think it was a
huge and tragical state to populate thefederal judiciary with so many government lawyers,

(23:23):
I think I think so many federaljudges have a kind of an unconscious allegiance
to the government. They spent somuch of their career making arguments on behalf
of government and rationalizing the exercise ofgovernment power that when they then become judges,
I think they carry a lot ofthat baggage with them, and I
think they are too inclined to say, well, you know, I used
to make arguments like this on behalfof the government. That sounds reasonable to

(23:45):
me. So I think we'd bemuch much better off if a much,
much smaller percentage of judges were formergovernment lawyers and a higher percentage of judges
were people who used to work againstthe government and used to making arguments opposite
direction and saying, you know what, the government needs to be limited and
the government doesn't have the power todo this thing. So I don't know

(24:07):
for sure that that's where the problemlies, but I suspect that it's a
big parget. Yeah, all right, So aside from the judiciary, for
people like you and me who lovethe Constitution, and hopefully the kids listening,
what can we be doing to getback to that founding ideal. Yeah,
well, I think that the bestthing that any of us can do

(24:27):
is to really try to approach thisquestion of what should the government look like
and how did they write the Constitutionwith kind of again a sort of sense
of humility, and realize that youmay have your own ideas about will be
a good idea and what wouldn't bea good idea, and that's perfectly fine,

(24:47):
but we are all subject to thelimits that are put in the Constitution.
And so even if you feel verystrongly that the federal government should have
a robust role in public education,there is a process to that, and
the correct process is to go andcreate a constitutional amendment and says, hey,
you know what, the federal governmentwas not given the power for the

(25:07):
public education, but they should havethat power. So now we're going to
vote on that as a country.And so just to educate oneself about the
origins of the Constitution, where itcame from, why we have one the
Declaration of Independence, which really articulatesa kind of a moral framework in which
the Constitution is situated. But Ithink again, the most important thing is
to have that sense of humility,is to realize but just because you think

(25:30):
something is a good idea, orjust because you think something is a bad
idea, it doesn't necessarily mean thatthe Constitution agrees with you. Again,
I think that giving the federal governmentthe power to have an income tax and
take money from people that they've earnedis a terrible idea, and I think
it's a disastrously bad policy. ButI have to have the humility of recognizing
that most people disagree with me,and they passed an amendment giving the federal
government that power or sol familiarize yourselfwith a document familior, familiarize yourself with

(25:53):
this history, but also try tohave the character to recognize that we all
have to approach it for the senseof humility and realize that not everything you
think should be in it is init. And they even contain some things
that you disagree with, And guesswhat that's compromised in that That's that's what
you have to have in order tohave a fruition democracy, Like we have
a respect of the people's rights.You can certainly advocate for your own rights,

(26:15):
but at the end of the day, you recognize that we live in
a large society with lots of differentpeople with lots of different respectives in face
and let's try to respect each otherand get along absolutely all right, So
a fun question, Do you havea favorite clause or a favorite amendment?
Yeah, I think so. So. I think that for me, it's

(26:36):
a little bit ob scure, andmost people haven't read it because it's a
little bit outside of the build rights. But for me, it's the fourteenth
Amendment. Fourteenth Amendment was added tothe Constitution after the Civil War to make
clear that there were significant limits onhow much power escape governments could exercise.
Up until that point, there reallyweren't any significant limits in the federal Constitution

(26:56):
as against state governments. The federalgovernment, I'm sorry. The US constit
up until that point is quote mostlyto the power of the federal government.
But what happened with the fourteenth Amendmentin eighteen sixty eight is that people realize,
you know what, we thought thatstates would be much more respectful of
people's freedom, and we thought thatstates would be much more enlightened in the
way they're governed. And you knowwhich is made of a state. They're

(27:17):
pretty horrible. Sometimes states were theones. It was state governments that propped
up the institution of slavery. Itwas state governments that instituted these things called
black codes and Jim Crow, whichwas an American form of aparthet of racial
separation that happened in the wake ofthe Civil War after the elimination of formal
slavery. And I think it wasreally beautiful and people got together and said,

(27:37):
you know what, we've replaced waytoo much faith in the integrity and
the legitimacy of state governments. Andso we're going to add this fourteenth Amendment
to the US Constitution that says,from now on, states have to respect
the right of people to eat,the protection of the law. I mean,
don't treat me differently because of thecolor of my skin or because I
happen to be an or woman.States have to respect due process, which
means they can't hurt you or takeanything away from you without a valid procedure.

(28:02):
And also, and this is areally key one that the screenport unfortunately
you may detect the team here hasfallen down on the job of protecting There's
also a provision of the fourteenth Amendmentthat says that most state should enforce any
law that impairs the privileges or inmunities of citizens in the United States,
which is essentially this whole massive ofrights to bed that provision of fourteen PENDENMA

(28:23):
so far has not been enforced inany serious way, but if it were
properly enforced, it would protect thingslike the ability to pick what job you
want to do for a living,protect your ability to own property and to
do what you think is best withthat property to them provided to recognize that
the group of rights to travel aroundin the country or travel around the state,
make decisions about your family, etcetera. So that's what I'm working

(28:45):
on with my colleagues. One ofthe most important things that I've worked on
throughout my career and the constitutional lawyerspersuading the Supreme Court to be faithful,
to be more faithful to the textof the fourteenth Amendment for them to summarize
fourteenth Amendment was added to the Constitutionafter the Civil War to act in the
state that's been made, which isto put too much confidence in the integrity
and the trust bodiness or state governmentswho were much more much much to your

(29:10):
trusting and state governments and the poorMended says you all. We need to
equip people of the ability to assertindividual rights against state governments, and that's
what they did. Yep, we'realways working toward that more perfect unionista,
as they said. All right,one final fun question. If the Bill
of Rights or if the Constitution,including the Bill of Rights were an emoji,
what do you think it would be. I think it would be a

(29:34):
sword in the shield. I thinkthat that one of the biggest risks when
you create a government is that youwill create something that ends up harming you
in exactly the way that you've You'vecreated it to protect your flum One sort
of whimsical way to put it wouldbe to say, if you imagine you
own a farmer or a ranch andyou have a bunch of coyotes stealing your

(29:55):
livestock and menacing your children. Ifyou bring a bunch of timberwolves onto the
land, you will solve your pioteproblem, but you'll now have a timberwol
problem. You've got timberwolves. Yeah, the government was created to protect us,
you know, from things like youknow, bandits and robbers, and
you know bullies and so forth.And it doesn't an effective job. But
would you have to be careful ofto make sure the government itself doesn't become

(30:17):
a bandit and a bully. Andthat's really what the Constitution was designed to
do. And so the way Isee the Constitution, the Bill of Rights
is it's kind of a sword anda shield that equips each and every one
of us with the ability to protectourselves against this very powerful entity that we've
created, namely the government. ButI think we do need because there really
are bad guys out there, andthere really are countries and you know,

(30:38):
timings out there who want to doharm to us. So we need a
government to protect us. But guesswhat, the government itself is perfectly capable
of becoming a bandit and a bully. And so the Constitution is our sword
and shield against the power of thegovernment. Yeah. I love that answer.
I think we will leave it theretoday. Thank you so much,
Clark the pleasure. I love thatClark said that the Constitution is a sword

(31:08):
and a shield. It's a swordbecause it's a weapon we can use to
fight back if our rights are beingthreatened, and it's a shield because it
protects us and our rights. Soit's a weapon and a way to defend
ourselves. And that is something prettyspecial that we have here in America.
Thank you so much for listening.Next time we'll be talking about George Washington,

(31:32):
how he was chosen as president,and all about his inauguration when he
became our first president. In themeantime, you can find us at Growing
Patriots on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Until then, they're pretty us solved
for Germany. And this has beena presentation of the FCB podcast Network where

(32:09):
real talk lifts. Visit us onlineat FCB podcasts dot com.