An important part of the life of any tribe is its mythology, which is why self-described members of a political tribe are usually so keen to defend their myths from being debunked by skeptics.  Casting doubt on these myths is seen as something that only an outsider would do, so whenever a putative member of the tribe questions a certain myth he necessarily risks being considered as an outsider and being accordingly ostracized.  For example, Helen Rittelmeyer holds fast to the myth that the GOP is the more conservative party in the United States, for which there is vanishingly small evidence these days, and she finds Conor Friedersdorf’s lack of faith disturbing.  To the extent that membership in a political tribe is premised not on policy issues but on the acceptance of shared heroes and narratives, political tribalism requires a certain abdication of critical thought and an indifference to history.  The difficulties this creates for self-criticism and self-correction are obvious, but one of the reasons why political tribes insist on maintaining their myths is the same reason why any group does this, which is to give their allegiances greater meaning than they would otherwise possess.  Another reason why political myths are so powerful and enduring is that they help to justify past actions that cannot really be justified and to cover over present actions that need to be forgotten. 

Thus Lincoln “saved the Union,” when in reality he destroyed the Union and replaced it with something else, but the reality is too terrible and cannot be defended without endorsing a radicalism his admirers usually do not want to endorse.  WWI, which was a bloody catastrophe from beginning to end, was fought, according to the propagandists, for the rights of small nations and to “make the world safe for democracy,” when it actually resulted in the ruin of many small nations and had nothing to do with protecting democracy.  According to another popular myth, Reagan “won the Cold War,” the clearest example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy in modern history.  Of course, those most interested to promote this myth are among those who most bitterly opposed Reagan’s engagement and negotiations with the Soviets at the time–to credit Reagan with this accomplishment is to align themselves with him despite their previous opposition and to appropriate him for their own purposes later on.  This is just one part of the Reagan myth, which has been built up and expanded over the last two decades as Americans on the right have become disgusted with Reagan’s heirs: they glorify Reagan in the past for much the same reason many glorify Palin today, which is their disgust with the last twenty years of Republican leadership.  They can find something admirable only in the past or in very new figures.  This is why I think there has been such powerful resistance to questioning the myth of Palin the champion of reform, because looking too closely at her record (or lack of a record) exposes the mythologizing for what it is.