“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.