Who WAS That George Mason Guy?

George Mason University’s appearance at the NCAA Basketball Tournament Men’s Final Four made two things clear: Mid-major conferences deserve more respect, and the university’s namesake is a very underappreciated Founding Father:

Let’s hope that all this attention being lavished on the George Mason University basketball team focuses some attention on the man himself.

If George Mason isn’t exactly a forgotten founding father, he is certainly one of the lesser known, which is too bad because of his great legacy to us - the written guarantee of our fundamental civil liberties. Mason drafted the prototype of the Bill of Rights in 1776 as part of Virginia’s state constitution. He fought in vain to have them included in the U.S. Constitution but after campaigning relentlessly succeeded two years later in having them added as the first 10 amendments to that document.

His friends, Washington, Madison, Jefferson, all admired his wisdom and intellect and he might have shared in their historical fame except that he had a prickly personality and didn’t much like politics or politicians.

His Gunston Hall plantation survives, not far from Washington’s Mount Vernon and the university that bears his name. In honor of the basketball team, his statue on campus is bedecked in George Mason paraphernalia and green and gold balloons. As the father of nine, he would have understood.

George Mason’s Wikipedia entry has more.