Today’s the 215^th birthday of the Bill of Rights, which is the real basis of what I think of as “America.” Rather than muse darkly on the many assaults on those freedoms we’re living through right now, today I’m taking heart from the example of George Mason, who more than anyone else gave us those ten amendments.

Mason wrote the precedent-setting Virginia Declaration of Rights, then fought to have that radical idea — that humans have built-in freedoms which supercede any government — included in the U.S. Constitution. When the constitutional convention slapped him down, he refused to sign the document, killing his long friendship with George Washington (so says today’s Writer’s Almanac, anyway.) The guy doesn’t sound like much of a pragmatic politician — more like an unrealistic idealist who must have felt like he hadn’t accomplished anything as he rode home from Philadelphia.
But he had infected the young James Madison with this “rights” idea, and he helped spread it to Jefferson, and the year before Mason died most of his vision was added to the Constitution as the Bill of Rights. And therefore I get to say and write pretty much whatever I like here in America.

It’s a good lesson for those of us who try to protect those freedoms and continue building a country Mason would be proud of: Don’t give up. You can never know what effect your action will have, added to the actions of others over time.

And don’t be afraid to be idealistic — that’s what the whole nation is founded on in the first place.