Rob Bishop: “The last action that we took in this body today was a resolution honoring the Constitution, which we celebrate tomorrow.…”

“The last action that we took in this body today was a resolution honoring the Constitution, which we celebrate tomorrow. Since we are not in session tomorrow, I wish to talk for a moment about that inspired document this evening. It's difficult to do that, because as we talk about the Constitution, I am looking straight at the relief of George Mason, who was one of those unique characters in American history, one of three men who spent the entire time at the Constitutional Convention and then refused to sign the document. When I was teaching school, I always insisted my students had to tell me why Mason refused to sign it, which, of course, was because it did not have the Bill of Rights. But I was always hoping, and hoping in vain, that some bright student would ask the better question, which is not why did Mason not sign, but why did all the other people who were there at the Founding Fathers convention not go along with Mason for a Bill of Rights? It was certainly not because they were opposed to civil liberties, but because the rest of the Founding Fathers realized that they could accomplish the same goal by the structure of government, by dividing power by the three branches of government horizontally so no branch had too much power, but equally by dividing power vertically between the Federal and State level. So no level of government had too much power; you could accomplish the same goal of protection of individual freedoms.…”