George Mason of Virginia

An American patriot who gets less recognition than he deserves is George Mason of Virginia.

Folks walk right by the monument to George Mason that is next to the 100-times bigger Jefferson Memorial. Mason didn’t get his memorial until 2002.

Mason is underappreciated as perhaps the principal author of our Bill of Rights. In May, 1776 he wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Two months later, Thomas Jefferson borrowed heavily from Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, in order to compose our July 4, 1776 Declaration of Rights. In 1789, thirteen years later, our Bill of Rights was fashioned on the model of Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights.

Another cause for underappreciation of Mason is the fact that he refused to sign the newly-proposed Constitution. What an act of integrity to pass on the chance to put his name on the signing page of the most important Constitution ever created. Why did Mason decline? Because he said, in heated argument with George Washington, the rights of the People and the States were not sufficiently guaranteed against encroachment by the General Government.

George Mason’s insistence that a Bill of Rights be added to any proposed Constitution was crucial in causing that very thing to happen. Without George Mason we very well may never have had a 1st Amendment to the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press….”

We can, in very large part, thank George Mason of Virginia for the fact that free speech flourishes on the worldwide web.