@Pat_Stedman@softforhades Mother having BPD or borderline traits would not rule out “nurture” as a cause in any way and could actually support the OP’s points about learned behaviors. The habits men often develop to tolerate BPD female behaviors would just as easily foster BPD traits in their children.
The richest man in America signed a document that could have gotten him hanged, and when someone sneered that he was safe because no one would know which Charles Carroll to come for, he picked up the pen and told the British exactly where to find him.
His name was Charles Carroll, and the colonies were crawling with men who shared it. His own father was Charles Carroll of Annapolis. So when the Declaration of Independence came to him for signing in 1776, a delegate made a cruel little joke. He said Carroll risked nothing by signing. There were so many Charles Carrolls that the King's men would never know which one to hang.
Carroll didn't argue. He leaned over the page and added three words to his signature: "of Carrollton." The name of his estate. His address. He was the only signer in the entire room who wrote down where he lived, and he did it on purpose, so that if the British wanted to come hang the traitor, they would know exactly which door to knock on.
That is who Charles Carroll of Carrollton was.
Here is what makes the moment even sharper. He was not a man with little to lose. He was the single wealthiest man in the thirteen colonies and the largest private landowner among them. While George Washington and John Hancock get talked about as rich men, it was Carroll who topped them all. When he signed, he was wagering the biggest personal fortune in America against a noose.
And he was the last man anyone would have expected to be there at all. Carroll was Catholic. In colonial Maryland, a colony founded as a Catholic refuge that had since turned on its own, Catholics could not vote. They could not hold public office. They could not worship in public. The most educated, wealthiest man in America was, in the eyes of the law, a second-class subject barred from the very government he was helping to create. He had spent seventeen years being educated by Jesuits in France and spoke five languages fluently, and back home he still could not legally cast a ballot.
So he became the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence, putting his name on a revolution that he hoped would build a country with room for men like him. That was its own enormous bet, made by a man the existing system had already shut out.
Then he simply outlived everyone.
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on the same astonishing day, July 4, 1826, exactly fifty years after the Declaration. When they were gone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton was the last living signer left on earth. For six more years he was the final human link to that room in Philadelphia, the last hand that had signed, a living relic of the founding that ordinary Americans traveled to see and shake.
He finally died in November 1832 at the age of ninety-five, fifty-six years after he wrote his address on a treason document and dared the empire to come find him.
The richest man in America. The only Catholic. The last one standing. He had more to lose than any of them, every legal reason to stay quiet, and he signed his full address anyway.
We remember the names we were handed in school. We forget the man who made sure his couldn't be mistaken for anyone else's.
Which Founding Father do you think history shortchanged the most?
I try not to contradict Nate very often but there’s a perfectly valid reason why it takes so long to count votes in California. Here is a typical timeline:
Election Day: everyone votes
Week 1: mail in ballots, absentee ballots, military ballots, overseas ballots, ballots accidentally issued to people’s pets, and ballots harvested from Skid Row start trickling in.
Week 2: As the ballots pile up, Officials consider appointing a Committee to Count Ballots.
Week 3: Committee to Count Ballots is appointed and commences discussion on electing a chairman.
Week 4: deadline for ballots from illegal immigrants.
Week 5: Committee decides that “chairman” is an outdated term and will be replaced by a term to be decided later once the Committee to Count Ballots Diversity Consultants finishes their report.
Week 6: fraudulent ballots from the Chinese Communist Party arrive.
Week 7: The Committee elects as Chairzerxon a nonbinary disabled child to count the ballots.
Week 8: it is discovered that the Chairzerxon does not actually know how to count.
Week 9: the ballots are thrown away and the Committee announces election results that are entirely made up.
Connecting young people to digital networks serves no purpose if they remain disconnected from themselves, others, and their own interiority. We must help young people rediscover silence, reflection, the ability to ask questions, the depth of relationships, and openness to transcendence. To listen to the soul, we must lend an ear, because the soul's voice is not a shout, but a whisper.
State of the political parties: Minnesota Republicans held a moment of silence for Derek Chauvin at their endorsement convention while Democrats confiscated glow sticks because of the potential risk to a small subset of epileptics
Today, I officially filed to run for Minnesota Senate District 41. I’m excited to continue fighting for common-sense solutions that put our community’s priorities first.