May 7, 2019
“To disarm the people; that … was the best and most effectual
way to enslave them.”
—George Mason, the Founding Father who championed our God-given
rights
Individual freedoms are under attack in America today. Too many
have misinterpreted—and even manipulated—the words and intent of
the Bill of Rights to fit their own agenda. The only way to know
their true meaning is to understand their chief architect, George
Mason.
George Mason:
The Founding Father Who Gave Us The Bill of
Rights
by William G. Hyland Jr.
Mason is arguably America’s most unappreciated and underestimated
Founding Father. Now, historian William G. Hyland Jr. reclaims
Mason for modern Americans at a time when the individual rights
Mason secured at the beginning of the republic are under
threat.
George Mason reveals the little-known truths about this forgotten
Founding Father that made him a powerful contributor to the new
nation:
· The Declaration of Independence was not Jefferson’s original
idea—he adapted it directly from Mason’s Virginia Declaration of
Rights
· James Madison, the supposed “Father of the Bill of Rights,”
strenuously opposed their addition to the Constitution while Mason
avidly insisted on it
· The original declarations of our “God-given rights” were forged
from Mason’s bookish knowledge of political history and philosophy,
and his loyalty to liberty
· Mason was so dedicated to defending individual freedoms that he
refused to sign the U.S. Constitution—asserting it did not
adequately uphold them
· He warned against the dangerous growth of the federal
government—especially an over-powerful executive branch and
overweening judiciary
Like the words of the Constitution and the Declaration, Mason’s
life and work must be justly understood if our rights to speech,
religion, and liberty are to have a chance of survival. This is the
essential biography of an essential Founding Father.