Democrat Biographical Myth Making

Let’s take a little break from all the craziness going on in DC over the shutdown/slimdown and the debt limit debacle.

I read this article by Dana Milbank, who wrote with regard to that silly controversy over the name of the DC football team: [emphasis added to quotes]

Are the Redskins really defending the name with an out-of-date survey that allowed anybody — even somebody with less native blood than Elizabeth Warren — to identify as a Native American?

Milbank is obviously math challenged.  It’s impossible to have “less native blood than Elizabeth Warren.”  That’s because she has no “native blood” despite the fact that she claimed Native American ancestry when she was a professor at Harvard Law, perhaps to help with an alleged lack of “faculty diversity.”

Warren, for those who don’t know, is currently Democrat U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, having been elected despite spouting undocumented “oral history” about Native American roots.

Hers is a long, convoluted, and controversial story that early on had one genealogical society apparently trying hard to help Ms. Warren with her false “person of color” narrative.  After being corrected by crack researchers in the blogosphere, that same genealogical society backtracked and had to admit that there’s no documentary proof of her claims:

The New England Historical Genealogical Society, which originally announced they found evidence of Elizabeth Warren’s Native American heritage, said today they have discovered no documentation to back up claims that she is 1/32 Cherokee.

“NEHGS has not expressed a position on whether Mrs. Warren has Native American ancestry, nor do we possess any primary sources to prove that she is,” said Tom Champoux, spokesman for the NEHGS. “We have no proof that Elizabeth Warren’s great great great grandmother O.C. Sarah Smith either is or is not of Cherokee descent.”

One potential problem with their “either is or is not of Cherokee descent”: It’s unclear whether or  not O.C. Sarah Smith is Elizabeth Warren’s ancestor in the first place.

The comments at this post as well as a series of articles at this site, cast real doubt upon Warren’s claim, which she herself appears to have suddenly dropped when it received serious scrutiny.  The Polly’s Granddaughter website provides some convincing oral history from Warren’s own family that refutes Warren’s claims.

The best that can be said for the aforementioned illustrious genealogical society is that they took at face value a family tree posted on a public website–a tree which itself made claims that were not backed up by any documentation, but which relied upon “oral history”.

Any genealogist worth her or his salt KNOWS to take oral history with a huge grain of salt.

Most embarrassing for Warren: Rather than being Cherokee herself, Warren appears to be descended from a man who, as a member of the Tennessee militia, actually took part in removing Cherokees from their homes and forcing them on a long march to Oklahoma.

So why am I bringing this up again?  Because of Dana Milbank.  In his article, it’s a “given” that Elizabeth Warren has “native blood”, albeit a small amount.

This myth has been disproven.  There’s no evidence to support it and a whole lot of circumstantial evidence that disproves it.

So please tell me: Why do progressives cling to these untruths?  Why do they continue to cling to myths about their political heroes (e. g., Barack Obama, Bill Clinton) and heroines (e.g., Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren), even after evidence proves them to be nothing more than myths?

We constitutional conservatives have become accustomed, over the few past decades, but especially since the rise of Barack Obama, to being called crazy.  We’re said to wear tin foil hats simply because we doubt the tall tales told by progressive after progressive, a bad habit that has culminated in the ultimate tall tale about an “improbable love” between Obama’s white, Kansas-born mother and his black, Kenyan, goatherding father.

We’ve been attacked by progressive psychologists who seek to define conservatism itself as a mental disorder, or even a developmental brain disease. [Fair warning: Get out the duct tape; that article may cause your head to explode.]

Why is it that these eminent psychologists ignore the potential pathology associated with the progressive tendency to believe biographical myths invented by their heroes and heroines?

What is it about the progressive brain that causes a progressive to ignore evidence and instead continue to believe a proven fantasy?

Why do progressive politicians tell so many tall tales about themselves in the first place?

Why aren’t psychologists interested in that particular phenomenon?

Until we’ve walked a mile in her moccasins, we can hardly fault Elizabeth Warren for believing romantic stories passed down through her family.  She wisely seems to have dropped the subject now that the story has been examined and found wanting.

However, once these fables are disproved, why do liberal writers like Dana Milbank seemingly continue to buy into them?

By the way, there’s talk of Elizabeth Warren running for president in 2016.

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