‘America’s government teacher,’ Sharon McMahon speaks to a sold-out crowd at UVU
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“It is not the job of government to make us “just, peaceful, good and free.” The Constitution does not belong to the government. It is our job. We. Us. Me and you. All of us.” — Sharon McMahon
In what she called her “Presidential Barbie” dress, Sharon McMahon took the stage at Utah Valley University to a standing ovation from a sold-out crowd of thousands earlier this month.
Called “America’s government teacher,” McMahon (@sharonsaysso) has over a million followers on Instagram alone, where she dishes out nonpartisan information about democracy. Her followers are affectionately known as “Governerds” — and Utah has a lot of them. A former high school government and law teacher, she began using Instagram during the 2020 election cycle to respond to misinformation she was seeing online, and she did it without name-calling, shaming or “otherizing.”
In an article in The Atlantic last year, author Elaine Godfrey wrote that McMahon is bringing people out of their echo chambers and has “built something valuable and rare: a place where people can talk kindly to one another, and occasionally even change their minds.” McMahon estimates that about 90% of her followers are women and about 60% to 70% feel politically homeless.
As her Instagram audience grew and inundated her with questions — she gets 10,000 a day — she created Zoom workshops, a subscription-only bookclub, a private discussion group and a podcast she named “Here’s Where It Gets Interesting.” Godfrey writes that Republican and Democratic lawmakers and candidates have emailed to ask about getting on the podcast. Her answer is almost always no. One rare exception was Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, who went on the podcast last year to speak about the importance of preserving democracy.
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McMahon was the keynote speaker during the fall civics educator conference held at UVU. She shared some of the back story of Gouverneur Morris, an oft-forgotten Founding Father. He was quite the character. He was also passionate about a united country. Called the “Penman of the Constitution,” he wrote and spoke extensively during the Constitutional Convention, giving more speeches than anyone else in attendance. He is most famously known as the author of the Preamble to the Constitution.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
In her talk, McMahon said that the preamble could be summed up in four words: just, peaceful, good and free. Calling the Constitution the “great commission to Americans,” she said that “We the People” are to be a people who are “just, peaceful, good and free.”
The government, she reminded her listeners, was not responsible for making us “just, peaceful, good and free.” Instead, the responsibility rests with us. “Some of the biggest and most important things in the world have happened because ordinary people made them happen. Not kings. Not billionaires. College students, soldiers, ministers, secretaries, children, teenagers, seamstresses, widows” are the ones who made them happen.
What mattered, she said, is not that they had opinions. “Opinions don’t change things.” What mattered, she said, is what they did. “Posting on Instagram is not activism. What mattered is ordinary people purposed in their heart to press forward with hope, with courage and with endurance.
“There is going to come a moment — and for some of you, that moment is now,” she said, “when we must choose between pressing forward with courage and retreating. There is going to come a moment when we must do what we think we cannot and the character that we have formed throughout our lifetimes will be called upon in that moment. And we will use everything that we have lived and experienced so we can do what is just. What is peaceful. What is good. And what is free.
“We are the people we’ve been waiting for.”
Speaking with Boyd Matheson on KSL’s “Inside Sources,” McMahon said she recognized that we all have limited time and limited amounts of capacity, but we all also care about our neighbors and communities — and we want to make a difference.
“What we need is for you to do what you can where you are with the resources available to you,” she said. “If we all do that, we can make an enormous difference, not just in our city or state, but in the world. I really want people to leave with a sense of empowerment and a sense of hope that what they’re doing does matter.”
Holly Richardson is the editor of Utah Policy
