Talk:George Mason a Patriot? Ironic Team Nicknames/@comment-101812-20060328184638

The above comment can be said without name calling.

"Franklin University Patriots" wouldn&quot;t be as appropriate for the school, as it is in Virginia and Ben was from Pennsylvania.

There were actually more than three non-signers of the Constitution. There were 15, four from Virginia. Only one other non-signer is well-known, Massachusetts&quot; Elbridge Gerry, the namesake of the term "Gerrymandering." Of the three Virginia signees, two already have college named after them: James Madison and George Washington (who has dozens of colleges named after him either directly, like George Washington or Washington & Lee, or indirectly like the University of Washington- as the state is named after him).

I&quot;m going to throw on my historian&quot;s cap for a moment here (I will be graduating with a B.A. in History in May). The Bill of Rights, which he fought for in addition to abolition of the slave trade. For his time, Mason was a very progressive guy (Not Thomas Paine progressive, but far more than the average). I would argue the Bill of Rights is the most important component of the Constitution, as the inclusion of the amendments impacts the everyday lives of American citizens far more than the rest of the document. It is also pivotal in terms of getting the Constitution signed; remember there were no representatives from Rhode Island and the changes had to be ratified by all states (due to the rules of the Articles of Confederation). "Signing the Constitution" is a little overrated anyway; many of the men we consider Founding Fathers (John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams) didn&quot;t.