Keep It in the Family

The Presidents of the United States are all related. It’s true. At least, according to an Ancestry.com entry by one Eric Dubay, for starters. And there's more. Burke’s Peerage, a British genealogical publisher that has been keeping up with the lineage of royalty and the like for over 200 years, sheds an even more revealing light about this revelation. This ruling bloodline is a one-way DNA street going all the way back to some of the most notable rulers throughout history. We're talking kings here people, European royalty! The same royal bloodline our forefathers fought to be free from.

After reading this it may sink in that they didn't quite make it. In fact, it turns out that every president all the way from George Washington to Bill Clinton, at least, has something in common. Well, something else in common I mean. Out of all the candidates up for election in each one of those contests, the winner was the one who had the most genes from European royalty. The list of common ancestors includes the biggest names throughout recorded history. For instance, 33 former presidents are related to the French ruler Charlamagne and King Alfred the Great of England.

So, in a country with a population of over 300 million, it may be somewhat of a shock that, for instance, former President George W. Bush and at least 16 other former U.S. presidents hang from the same side of the trunk—of the same tree! Not only that, but the majority of candidates who end up as the nominee for the party that ultimately loses the presidential race are also descendants from this same aristocratic lineage. For instance, Al Gore, former vice-president under Bill Clinton and extremely close runner up in the 2000 presidential election, is a descendant of Roman Emperors Louis II, Charles II, and Louis I. Former Secretary of State and Democratic nominee in the 2004 Presidential race John Kerry is directly descended from King Henry II and crusader King Richard the "Lionheart" of England.

And it would be a safe bet to say that, (don't ask me HOW), the trend continues. And it gets even more difficult to swallow. Lynne Cheney, wife of former vice president Dick Cheney, discussed in an interview to promote one of her books, Blue Skies no Fences, about discovering through preparation research that her husband and Barack Obama are eighth cousins!

I don't know what this is supposed to mean to you. Maybe nothing. I do know that I can't help but ponder over what it might mean about the founding and the founders of our nation. I can't help but wonder what it might mean about our process of electing a person to hold the most powerful position in the world. Shouldn’t there be more diversity in the results of a fair and free process to appoint the person who holds this post? How can it be that the same family dynasties who ruled the old world still hold fast onto those reins hundreds of years later and tens of thousands of miles later? I don’t know what it means but I do know that somewhere deep down inside of me, as an American, as a believer in freedom, I find myself not liking it. I find within myself an inability to trust it. I find within myself an overwhelming urge to exercise my right to question it from the highest places I can find to ask such questions. I feel it unlikely, however, that the answers would not come so easily. And that finding these answers would not rank very high on the priority lists of the general population. And I can't help but feel that there is something that is just not right about, well, all of it.