The lawyer came along lawyers are the most important people in the world, thus i must live, grabbed a parachute, jumped out. The priest looked at the little boy. There was only one parachute left here said, my son, ive lived a long and prosperous life. You have your whole life ahead of you. Take the last parachute and take off. The boy turned to the priest and said, no worries, father, the smartest man in the world just took off with my backpack. [laughing] lets talk about george mason. Not a lot of people know about george mason. They basically no that george mason university, maybe the final for the reached a few years ago, but they have no idea who george mason is. And hope my book changes that opinion. If Thomas Jefferson was a genius both professionally and personally, which he was, his mentor george mason was a genius. America was woven together on three revered pieces of paper, the declaration of independence, the constitution, and the bill of rights. George mason had a hand in
you sick. he decided to go off to what was then called the college of new jersey. what we now call princeton. this was going to have a very important effect on his political career. there was a significant distinction to be made in those days between princeton and william and mary. william and mary was not a rigorous academic environment. it was a school in which enlightenment thinking dominated. on the other hand, it was run by the colonial church of virginia. the episcopal church and if he had gone there he would have had a different kind of nurturance of his intellect and he encountered it in the college of new jersey. the college of new jersey at the time was john run by john witherspoon who was at recently emigrated scottish presbyterian divine. at the college of new jersey, madison encountered a particular occurrence of enlightenment thought that led him to have a very skeptical attitude about human nature. one way you can distinguish the american revolution from late