VA250 Panel Discussion — Full Transcript
The Complex Legacy of George Mason, George Mason University, Fairfax Campus
Speakers
Christopher Eck (moderator) — Executive Director, Gunston Hall
Carly Fiorina — National Honorary Chair, Virginia 250 Commission; CEO, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
George Oberle — Historian; Director, Center for Mason Legacies, George Mason University
Gregory Washington — President, George Mason University
Narrator (0:57)
From the first English settlement at Jamestown to the surrender of the British at Yorktown. From "give me liberty or give me death" to "all men are created equal." From Washington and Jefferson to Madison and Mason. From Powhatan and Pocahontas to James Armistead Lafayette and Gowan Pamphlet. From the ideas that inspired it to the battlefields that decided it, there is simply no America without it — and no better time than now to reconnect with your country and the place that made it possible.
Christopher Eck (2:02)
Welcome to the Fairfax Campus of George Mason University, where we are honored to host today a special event celebrating one of Fairfax County's own founding fathers, George Mason. My name is Christopher Eck. I am Executive Director of Gunston Hall, George Mason's 18th-century estate on the Potomac River in Mason Neck, Virginia, not far from the home of that other George — Washington.
Joining me today are three distinguished panelists who will explore the complex legacy of George Mason, its parallels with the broader American experience, and its current relevance, particularly here at the university that bears his name.
To my left, Carly Fiorina, a transformational business and civic leader, and the first woman to lead a Fortune 50 company. She is deeply engaged in American history through her leadership roles with the Virginia 250 Commission and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and I know your father's family has deep ancestral ties to Virginia.
We have George Oberle on the end. He's a history librarian, historian, co-founder, and director of the Center for Mason Legacies here at George Mason University. He's especially recognized for his contributions to the Enslaved People of George Mason Memorial Project, an initiative that honors and documents the lives of the enslaved individuals who lived and labored at Gunston Hall. Good to see you again, George.
And Gregory Washington is president of George Mason University, a mechanical engineer by education and training. He has taught and served in leadership at The Ohio State University and UC Irvine before being selected to be the eighth president of George Mason University in 2020. I think that was an interesting year to be brought on to George Mason's campus. At GMU, he has championed access, student success, and research that serves the public good — values that resound deeply with the legacy of George Mason himself. And I must add that in this 250th anniversary year, it's an honor to share the stage with a President Washington.
Audience (4:09)
Hear, hear.
Christopher Eck (4:14)
And together, we'll discuss the complex legacy of George Mason: founding father, champion of individual rights — ancient rights that he believed were inherent as British subjects — and a man bound by the contradictions of his time, while at the university that not only bears his name but actively confronts and examines that legacy, including its difficult dimensions, in pursuit of a more just and informed future. So please welcome our distinguished panel.
We're going to go in a round-robin form, ask each of them a few questions, and I'm going to start with you, Carly. Our first question: Beyond your celebrated career as a technology executive, you've become a passionate advocate for civic life and American history. You currently serve as the national honorary chair of the Virginia 250 Commission, and now, very recently, CEO of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. What draws you so deeply to Virginia and America's founding story?
Carly Fiorina (5:17)
Well, thank you — and thanks for being a great moderator. America was made in Virginia. This is the birthplace of the nation. It is also the crucible of the nation; it's always been the crucible of the nation. The issues that play out across our country have always been centered and played out most intensely here in Virginia. So if you want to understand America, its past, its present, you have to be here in Virginia. And so it's a great honor for me to play these roles.
I also think that history, as a word, for some people is very academic — we think of professors. For others, history is very political; people sometimes think that history is cherry-picked. We talk about the good and leave out the bad, or maybe we spend too much time on the bad and forget the good. But what history really is, is our story. And for each of us individually, we learn in our lives that if we don't know our story — the story of who came before us, the story of what they were like — then we don't know who we are.
And that's particularly true of this nation. If we do not understand who built this nation, how they built it, why they built it; if we don't understand the ideas and the ideals that propelled people forward to fight for a new nation; if we don't understand why self-evident truths that all men are created equal — that while those words at the time only applied to white male property owners, nevertheless those words inspired everyone. And so our Revolutionary War, for example, was fought by people of every color, every creed, free and enslaved, native and immigrant, from every continent in the world. So if we don't understand those things about ourselves, we don't really know why we're Americans. And I think that matters a lot in our 250th year — that we learn, remember what this nation is: not perfect, but utterly unique in the world, a place of great possibility. And we get recentered on why we are Americans, all of us.
Christopher Eck (7:42)
I think that's a great segue to the theme of the Virginia 250 Commission, which is "America Made in Virginia." And as you travel the commonwealth this year, what strikes you most about Virginia's contributions to the birth of the nation?
Carly Fiorina (7:57)
So, literally, there would not be a United States of America without Virginia. Of course, Virginia was the place where three cultures came together for the first time: European, Indigenous, West African. And that clash — that blend — of those three cultures has defined so much about our culture ever since: our art, our music, our food. That would be one example of "America Made in Virginia."
Another example: we've mentioned a few names here. George Mason — my goodness, this incredible intellect who forged some of those ideas. Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence. George Washington, the leader of the army. James Madison, an author of the Constitution. In other words, all of the documents and some of the greatest leaders of revolutionary times were all Virginians. And many of them were educated together in Virginia as well. So whether it's the culture that is uniquely American, the ideas that are uniquely American, or the battles that actually gave America an opportunity to be an independent and free nation — all those things happened in Virginia. So, sorry, Massachusetts and Boston. Those are all important places; really important things happened. But without Virginia, there is no America.
Christopher Eck (9:36)
I think my mother's going to be very disappointed about Boston, being a native Bostonian. But as someone who doesn't live far from George Mason's home, Gunston Hall — what, besides Gunston Hall's wonderful staff, intrigues you most about George Mason's contributions to America's founding?
Carly Fiorina (9:56)
So, George Mason — and there are much more expert people on this panel than I am about George Mason — but to me, what's so interesting about him: he was obviously a very thoughtful and intellectual man. He was also a hypocrite. By the way, hypocrisy's not new. Goodness, hypocrisy has been around a long time. He also was, like so many enslavers, unwilling to let go of the things that provided comfort and privilege to his family, even in the face of obvious hypocrisy. That is not new either.
I'm often struck by the fact that George Mason and George Washington — neighbors along the Potomac River, friends for a long time — ultimately had their friendship destroyed by their differences over a lack of a Bill of Rights, and they never spoke again for the rest of their lives. That's not new either. We see friendships and families torn apart by political differences. It happened with George Mason and George Washington. And so to me, he's a wonderful reminder that human nature doesn't change, although our circumstances do. He's a wonderful reminder that we have always been a divided nation, that politics has stirred deep passion always.
But he's also a reminder that ideas drive humanity forward, and there has never been such a powerful or radical idea as, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, among these life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." That idea — absolutely radical, completely aspirational — has driven every movement for human liberty, equality, and dignity everywhere ever since. And it is what makes this nation so unique, because it declares that this is a nation of possibility.
Christopher Eck (12:18)
I think it was great that they had the quill and pen and not emojis back then, so you could actually express those ideas. I'm going to ask George next. As an historian and a history librarian with considerable expertise in the life and legacy of George Mason, why do you think his story matters to the American Revolution? And I know you've just written a book about these kinds of topics.
George Oberle (12:38)
Oh, sure. No, well —
Christopher Eck (12:39)
I'll plug you.
George Oberle (12:41)
Well, thank you. The book is from UVA Press — "Creating an Informed Citizenry." I don't talk a lot about George Mason, unfortunately, but I do talk about the impact of the Revolution.
And to get to your question about what makes George Mason really important to the revolutionary moment — I tell my students this — it's actually much more interesting to teach ourselves and our students to ask questions: to not just look for the answer, but to ask questions. So my answer to you would be in the form of a series of questions, which I do to my students all the time, and it drives them crazy.
It depends on who you're asking as to what the meaning of the American Revolution was. Who was the Revolution for? Was it for elite men who owned property? They would have one set of answers. Was it for elite women who owned property? They might have a different set of answers. Was it for free people of color? Was it for poor men who were tenants of people like George Mason and George Washington? Was it for enslaved people? In each case, as you start to think about who the American Revolution was for, you get different sets of answers.
And George Mason provides us with a language — a language he did not actually totally buy into, as we talked about when we went through our tour of the memorial. He limited it through the idea that, well, these rights were for everybody once they enter the state of society. That doesn't mean he wasn't important, and it doesn't mean that he was just a hypocrite. What it means is that he was a flawed human being who had a really amazing set of thoughts. And as a human being, he also understood the limitations that those thoughts would provide for the future of his own family. And so he started to limit those ideas.
Nevertheless, it provided opportunities for people like me, coming from a poor family — for people who might've been alive at the time, who were tenants, who thought, "Well, maybe this vision is really about me." And in fact, as one of my wonderful professors told me when I was saying, "Oh, I'm not really the right person, I don't fit, I'm not as smart as these other people," she said to me, "Well, why not you, George?" Those people then, I think, would say, "Well, why not me? Why don't I fit into this vision of a new country? And in fact, maybe I can construct it, and I'll fight for that." So that's what I think George Mason provides me with. So within that cynicism, I have hope.
Christopher Eck (16:18)
Well, and with that — as the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, George Mason created a template that you find echoed, as we were talking earlier, by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence and by Madison in the Bill of Rights. We know Mason refused to sign the Constitution because it lacked a bill of rights. Madison himself later said that Mason was — and this is a play on words — the master builder of the Constitution. Yet he held over 100 people in slavery and failed to free them in his will, as we were discussing earlier at the memorial. How do we reconcile this contradiction?
George Oberle (16:53)
I think that's an important set of questions, and I think we have to acknowledge that as much as that language of universal rights — which we now glom onto and say, "Oh, this is visionary and important" — he didn't really mean it for everybody. That's the important thing. He was a pragmatist. George Mason was a definite pragmatist.
As we were also talking about, he's one of the few Founding Fathers who didn't have debt, and so he knew how to manage a budget. He knew how to make money. He was a good businessman. He diversified his businesses — all the things that you might think of today. He was an entrepreneur. We talked about Washington as an entrepreneur; George Mason is just as much of an entrepreneur as any of these guys. They saw tobacco was a losing business, so they started growing wheat. Where did they sell their wheat? Where do you think? They sold it to the Caribbean — which helped, because the Caribbean was growing what? Sugar, with all their enslaved people. So he was really smart, and he knew how to diversify his resources.
So I justify, or I reconcile, these ideas in the form of: George Mason was just a regular person — a smart person, as Carly was saying. He was a hypocrite in his own time, but aren't we all? I still shop at places and get cheap goods when maybe I should buy more American. Right? We all have these flaws in us. But he did have — and I say this all the time, I wasn't sure I was going to say this — me and my colleagues call George Mason kind of a cranky old guy who had a couple of really good days. And within those good days, you do have this hope for a better life for others.
Christopher Eck (18:54)
And I think that calls to mind the contradiction — that what Mason stated his ideals were and his lived reality reflect something profound in the American experience. A nation whose pursuit of a more perfect union, to Carly's words, an aspiration to the highest ideals, is always strained against its flaws and imperfections. What does Mason's complex legacy tell us, George, about where we've been and where we are as a country in our 250th birthday year?
George Oberle (19:27)
So I'm going to paraphrase one of my students who's actually in the audience. The whole idea of — in this moment, we have a lot of folks who (I'm going to clean it up) don't want to dump on our birthday, right? And there are some people — not these people up here, and not the people in this audience — there are some people who don't want to talk about the problematic past and the ways in which our past is still with us.
And in some ways, I feel that the lessons from Mason are something we can continue to engage with, so that we can have discussions about the messy past, about our messy present, and about how we, as a society, can engage in more outreach and civic participation, and in a civil way with each other — to get beyond the name-callings that go on, and to get more into the idea of producing service and giving back to our republic. So that we thus use what they would've recognized as the idea of virtue, and the idea of having virtuous citizens who are not just interested in their own material gains, but also in the good of the whole.
Christopher Eck (21:07)
And I think that's a conversation that directs me over to you, Gregory. George Mason University is Virginia's largest and most diverse public university. Among Virginia's institutions of higher education, tensions between government power and individual liberty — particularly around First Amendment issues — often arrive here first and loudest, as you well know. How do you balance free expression with the complicated, passionate community that this university brings together?
Gregory Washington (21:40)
Well, what I'll say first and foremost, to tie together what's been said here: you've heard that George Mason and George Washington really had a break in their relationship over ideology, and after some period of time stopped speaking because of ideology. Well, I'm here to tell you that the bringing together of George Washington and George Mason exists on this campus and is personified by me. My name's Gregory Washington, and I'm the president of George Mason University. And I also —
Christopher Eck (22:30)
Well played, sir.
Gregory Washington (22:33)
And I also have, as a campus and as a leader of this campus, had to grapple with the very basic tenets that Mason stood for — that have also become, for lack of a better way of putting it, core values of our institution. Freedom of expression being one of them. That's one of the core values and core tenets. If I were to tell you the thing on which we debate, argue about, and engage the most on this campus, it is indeed free expression. Every major conflict, every major issue that has taken place in this country over the last five years, without fail, has been debated vigorously on this campus. And at times when the federal government has come to the campus and tried to limit speech, there was a vociferous pushback — a backlash — to that very same set of intrusions. Because not only do the basic core values live here, it's an honor to our namesake, that being George Mason.
Christopher Eck (24:08)
So even before your first day as president in 2020 — speaking of these conflicts — the aftermath of George Floyd's death placed you on the front lines of a campus reckoning. Protesters demanded that George Mason's statue be removed and his name stripped from the university. Walk us through those early moments of your presidency: how the First Amendment applied, and how GMU's approach to Mason's legacy was tested in real time.
Gregory Washington (24:38)
People fail to realize we were also going through a once-in-a-generation pandemic at the time. But it didn't stop people, and that's the amazing part of this campus. In the heart of the most significant pandemic in recent memory, there were mass protests on this campus. The weekend before I started as president was the week of the major march to the George Mason University statue — the very one we saw earlier today. And the whole discussion at that point was that it should be removed.
And it's interesting, but in my mind, it personified the very discussion, the very complication — the complexity of George Mason, the man. Yes, he held more than 100 slaves and did not release them upon his death; in fact, he willed them to his family. But he also authored the most radical document in modern human history. You can actually do both.
And because of that legacy, that persuaded me and the leadership team — and we had vigorous discussions on this — to say, "No. This is our opportunity to lean into this complexity, not just of George Mason, but of the American diaspora. This is a complexity of the country itself." Look: of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, [number inaudible] owned enslaved individuals. 25 of the 55 signers of the Constitution owned enslaved individuals. 12 of the first 18 presidents owned enslaved individuals. Slavery was the economic engine of the country during George Mason's time.
And so when you look at it from that perspective, you can understand how that decision would've been a difficult decision for him. But you also understand something about the country — and I think this is the piece that we miss. We took the economic engine of the country at that time, understanding that it was wrong, and the country changed it and moved away from it. Its economic engine — the primary economic engine, clearly, for the South — we had to forgo that for something else. And I contend to you, in the words of Martin Luther King, "The arc of justice bends towards righteousness." Because we bent as a country in the right direction, that gave us a philosophical pedestal by which we could guide the world, and it also ushered in the greatest economic expanse of any country in the history of man. We gave up our primary economic engine, and because we did that, we gained something so much greater.
Christopher Eck (28:39)
As someone who grew up in the shadow of Martin Luther King in Atlanta, I can appreciate the bending of the arc to justice. But you must have considered the calls to change the name of the university. Why not give in to the calls and take his statue down? That probably would've been the easy thing — you've seen that occur a thousand times, not only in this country, but elsewhere. So what purpose does the statue to Mason, and his name on the university, continue to serve today?
Gregory Washington (29:07)
Well, as I was saying before, at George Mason we pride ourselves on being altogether different. It is not surprising to me that not just the leadership, but the students, the faculty — that a collective body of us came forward with the notion that, no: A, we're going to keep George Mason's name; but B, and more importantly, we're going to use it as a platform to educate people, not only about the complexity of George Mason, but about the complexity of the country. And I believe we have done that extraordinarily well.
The protests were also part of the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. People don't realize there was a growing movement not just to change the name of George Mason University, but to actually change it to George Floyd University. We were dealing with all of those issues — significant issues of that ilk — at that time. And I believe that we didn't just handle it well; we handled it in a way that history would go back and say, "You managed it the right way. You utilized this the right way. You recognized — and were able to commend — George Mason for his contributions, but also be critical of some of his thoughts and actions relative to America's original sin."
Christopher Eck (31:06)
I think that's a great way to pass the question on to you, George. Tell us how the Enslaved People of George Mason research project developed.
George Oberle (31:18)
So I'm really proud to have been part of that. We started this work in — actually, there was an honors discussion with one of your predecessors in 2016, where there was this call to try to understand who George Mason was. And after that conversation, my colleagues Dr. Wendy Manuel-Scott and Dr. Benedict Carton and I got together to do an OSCAR proposal — an undergraduate research program — where the students did this intense work over the course of a summer.
They read, as if they were grad students, really big books — Slave Counterpoint, you know the kinds of books I'm talking about, huge books — and they had to do it really quickly, as a kind of introduction to the historical scholarship. And they developed their own sets of questions from that scholarship. Only one of them was a history major, which was really important to us, because of the very conversation we're having about the importance of having a civics background. We didn't want just historians. We wanted poli-sci people. We wanted people who were in tech kinds of roles. We wanted their questions — but then we wanted to teach them how to engage with historical records to understand these complex histories, so they could answer their own questions.
And so they did this. It was a big success. We started this project, and then the George Floyd stuff and all the things you were talking about hit, and I can tell you, the three of us were like, "Oh my gosh." All the work we'd been doing to try to create this really broad contextual understanding of the complex legacy of our namesake — that was going to be lost simply because we were going to change the name, and thus get rid of the statue.
And I'm really grateful, in my opportunity to talk to leadership, to say that we think — and President Washington agreed — that this is what a university is for: to have these hard conversations. If you're not going to have them here, where are you going to have the hard conversations? And so, by being inspired by our students' work, and doing our job as teachers to help them learn how to engage with evidence — not innuendo, evidence — that allowed us to do this project. And it's been a transformational moment in my life. It's just been wonderful. As somebody who's worked in a university — a public school — for 20-whatever years now (28), when the students said, "The one thing we want is some kind of memorial that acknowledges the enslaved people," I looked at them and said, "Sure. That'll happen." Trying not to be cynical. And, oh my gosh, it happened. And that also taught me a lesson: have hope. Don't be cynical, George.
Christopher Eck (34:55)
And I think that gives us the opportunity to take a closer look at the memorial itself.
Memorial video narration (35:03)
In 2016, a group of George Mason University undergraduates, mentored by faculty, explored the little-known slaveholding legacy of George Mason IV — the American patriot and the university's namesake. The result was the Enslaved Children of George Mason project, which revealed the lives of the enslaved who lived and worked at Gunston Hall, Mason's home in northern Virginia. The project led to the creation of the Enslaved People of George Mason Memorial, the centerpiece of the redesigned Wilkins Plaza on the Fairfax campus, and a focal point in how we are addressing our institution's identity as it relates to a complicated patriot.
Often in my classes, when we begin to discuss George Mason IV, students are familiar with the fact that he penned the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and that that document became foundational to our nation's Bill of Rights. They are often surprised to learn that George Mason IV was also a slaveholder. Yes, his name is across our shirts, his image blazed across our campus — and yet only recently have we begun to reckon with the fact that George Mason IV held more than 100 people, men, women, and children, in bondage.
The four quotes surrounding the Mason statue exemplify four Masons in one: the brilliant legal scholar; the ardent defender of individual freedoms for a limited few; the enslaver of Black men, women, and children; and the father of nine, who provided for his family at Gunston Hall.
Penny, an enslaved child given by Mason to his daughter, animates the experiences of a girl disappeared from the public record. She stretches out her hand and navigates a narrow staircase, reminding us of her vulnerability, her strength, and resistance, as if to say, "No more."
Compelled to serve George Mason, James offers a quill for writing declarations, his fist symbolizing resilience and a reckoning.
At the bottom of the water fountain is a stone pattern symbolizing an African custom practiced at Mason's Gunston Hall plantation. Enslaved people came to this ritual site to pray and to look to their origins across the sea.
The late Roger Wilkins was an African American civil rights leader, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and a former Mason professor. This plaza is dedicated to his legacy. As he said, "We have no hope of solving our problems without harnessing the diversity, the energy, and the creativity of all our people."
Christopher Eck (38:35)
That was a great process that you went through, and I'm sure it served the people here at George Mason University well. So that brings me to you, Gregory. How does the memorial now serve the university's educational mission, and what role does George Mason's statue play in student expression today?
Gregory Washington (38:55)
Well, that part of campus today serves as a focal point for student activism and for free expression. It has always been a focal point, and it is a stronger focal point today than it ever has been. That's number one.
Number two, and of equal importance, it actually highlights the work, the research, and the engagement of our faculty and students. It's not just a memorial that's a witness to the complexity of George Mason. It's actually a research project, and that research project not only highlights George Mason the man, it highlights his legacy in all of its complexity, and it ties it to the current times with the engagement of one of our great 20th-century scholars in Roger Wilkins.
The third thing it does is position us for our future. Free expression will always be a part of this campus, because the campus was birthed out of a certain set of principles and values. We like to say here, we live our values — and you can trace our values literally back to our namesake. The core values of this campus are very much aligned with the core writings and teachings of George Mason, whether or not — despite how he lived his life.
Christopher Eck (41:00)
I know, Carly, we were recently together down in Colonial Williamsburg for the Virginia 250 Native Leadership Conference, and I thought you did a wonderful job. Do you see a connection here between the legacy of George Mason, his expression of rights, and the discussions that we were having down in Williamsburg?
Carly Fiorina (41:23)
So the conference you're referencing was our first semiquincentennial event this year. We gathered tribal chiefs from all across the country to discuss their histories — the histories of their tribes, their histories with this nation and in this nation, a history of heartache and heartbreak in so many ways. We thought it was important to begin the semiquincentennial year with those who were here first.
And it was an amazing event, because, of course, what you learn when you study tribal nations is that so much of what we incorporated in our own democracy came from Native tribes. James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, General Lafayette — these are people who came to interact with tribes on a regular basis, and democratic governance existed long before our Founding Fathers. Representative government was actually being practiced by Indigenous peoples. And in fact, you also learn that many of the symbols we associate with our nation came from Indigenous tribes. The symbol of an eagle with arrows. E pluribus unum — out of many, one — came directly from an Indian expression at the time: "our minds together as one." And so what we learn is that, as a nation, this has been a continuous process of learning about one another and getting better as a result of it.
And I guess that's what really strikes me about what's going on — what I hope is going on — in this semiquincentennial. Virginia 250 has three principal goals. One is to educate: to educate Americans by telling the whole story, the complete story, with all its contradictions, with all its miseries as well as triumphs. Secondly, to engage with every community, so that every community — no matter what it is, no matter where it comes from, no matter who people look like or what their last names are — sees itself in our American story, and understands why it is part of this great nation. And the third, ultimately, is to inspire a season of civic renewal. In other words, for people to say, "As a citizen of this nation, I want to be engaged. I want to help renew our nation's understanding, and I want to do my part to help form a more perfect union."
What strikes me about the conversation we've been having here is — when President Washington talked about freedom of expression, we talked about the fact that the Founding Fathers disagreed about many things. It took much compromise and debate, and in some cases destroyed friendships, to get to the point where we had a Declaration of Independence, or a Constitution. And we also know that when people say we've never been so divided as a nation, it's simply not true. We've always been divided as a nation. During the Revolutionary War, there were patriots who fought, but there were loyalists who resisted.
But here's the thing. What you learn when you study our history — what we were just talking about — is that it is when people engage in freedom of expression and freedom of debate that we actually move forward. It's when people retreat to their camps and only talk to people who agree with them all the time — that's when we get ourselves into trouble. Freedom of expression and freedom of debate is difficult. It's taxing. It's very stressful sometimes. But it is how we move forward, because it's always true — in politics, and a brain surgeon will tell you as well — that the human mind only learns when it is challenged by something new and different. So we don't get better as a species, and we don't get better as a nation, unless we are prepared to be challenged, and to debate, and to say, "Wow, I totally disagree with you, but how about we discuss and learn?" So that freedom of expression that President Washington speaks so eloquently about is at the core of what built this nation: our ability to learn from people who are different than ourselves, and to incorporate what we learn from them to make forward progress. That's always been the history of this nation, and I hope it will always be.
Christopher Eck (46:54)
Bring back the dinner-table conversations we all used to grow up with, right? George, do you have anything you want to add?
George Oberle (47:01)
No, this has just been an incredibly engaging experience. I would just encourage people to be engaged, to look around the environments that we all live in, and look for your questions — and try to understand how the past can be useful in our present. And try to do some work. Wonder about the names of the streets around us. Ask questions, because this is how we learn. And then talk to people.
Christopher Eck (47:42)
Perhaps, Carly, I can close out with a question for you as well, to bring this full circle. In your role as chair of Virginia 250 and CEO of Colonial Williamsburg, what does this way of fully and honestly holding George Mason's — and other founders' — legacies mean for the American experiment today, and what lessons should we carry with us?
Carly Fiorina (48:06)
You don't really ask easy questions, do you?
Christopher Eck (48:11)
Too much school.
Carly Fiorina (48:12)
We're all complicated. We're all complicated people. None of us is perfect. And so when you study someone like George Mason — yes, you are impressed by his complexity; yes, you are impressed by both his brilliance and his failures, his faults, his blind spots. But I think the thing that resonates with me is, we learn in our own lives that you don't really love someone until you know them — know all of them. You can only say "I love you" to someone when you know everything about them, their failings, their triumphs. It's not some glossed-over version of someone. You actually know them.
Well, what is patriotism? Patriotism literally is love of country. We cannot love our country, we cannot be patriots, we cannot be citizens, unless we know our country. Know it all — know all the complexities, know all the failings and failures, know all the setbacks, know all the hypocrisies. When we know our country, when we know ourselves, then we can say, "I am a patriot." Nostalgia is not history. Propaganda is not history. To know our country fully is the only way we can be true citizens and true patriots.
Christopher Eck (50:02)
Thank you. President Washington, anything to add?
Gregory Washington (50:09)
There is absolutely nothing that I can add to that.
Christopher Eck (50:20)
It's always good when you can needle a president on a stage and get applause, right? George, anything else you'd like to say?
George Oberle (50:28)
No, this is wonderful. Thank you.
Christopher Eck (50:30)
Well, thank you, Carly. Thank you, Gregory. Thank you, George. I've enjoyed your thoughtful comments, your insights, all that you do for the people here, your experiences, all that you've shared with our audience today. We've explored the story of George Mason — his warts, his flaws, his foibles, his gout.
George Oberle (50:51)
We didn't talk about his gout.
Christopher Eck (50:53)
Well, at the memorial.
George Oberle (50:54)
At the memorial, yeah. The toe rub.
Christopher Eck (50:57)
He was a man who had these flaws, but as we've noted, he also had great qualities. And I think that's the story of America as a nation, right? We have our flaws, our warts. We have our great moments. There's a constant tension between our ideals and aspirations, and our realities and our actions and how we deal with them.
George Mason wrote and expressed the beliefs that formed the foundation of our individual liberties — we've talked about that. He once wrote, "But if I can only live to see the American Union firmly fixed and free governments well established in our Western world, and can leave to my children but a crust of bread and liberty, I shall die satisfied." We know that he died a rich man in terms of family, a rich man in terms of his property and his wealth — but he also left us a rich legacy. And because of his ardent support for the cause of freedom, he was appointed to the Constitutional Convention. And while there, he refused to sign the Constitution on principle, because he believed it incomplete to secure freedom without a bill of rights. But after his death, in his will, he also signed away the freedom of over 100 souls, as we've talked about. That's also his legacy — even as he had written about the evils of slavery in his lifetime, that all slave owners are petty tyrants. So we know that he was self-aware, probably more than we give him credit for.
And that is a hard truth, and it's a truth of our nation, our community. And, as Carly said, we can't be patriots unless we know our history — the good, the bad, the ugly, not to quote an old movie. But what gives me hope, and what should give all of us hope, is that we're still here, wrestling with the American experience, still building memorials to tell a more complete story, defending the right to protest the memory of the people we honor. I think George would be proud. And we're still asking questions about what it means to form a more perfect union.
The work that was begun by George Mason and his contemporaries wasn't completed by them, nor by the next generation, nor by the generations that followed. And it's been the duty of all of us, in each generation, to move the line toward the ideals he helped move forward and helped put into words. So in this 250th anniversary year — not only of George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, but of the Declaration of Independence and of the nation — this work belongs to all of us now.
And I want to thank our panelists — Carly Fiorina, President Gregory Washington, Dr. George Oberle — for your candor, your care, and the depth of thought that you brought to this conversation. And on this anniversary of American independence, it's not merely a celebration of what was. It's an opportunity to reckon with history honestly, with what is past, and to recommit ourselves to what must be. And I want to thank all of you for being part of that discussion we've had today.