Imagination is Reality, Pt. 2

Yesterday I wrote about the Tea Party tendency to assume questions and the absence of information as proof of something malevolent. Yesterday on President Obama's birthday, Rachel Maddow waded into that tendency taken to the extreme - the Birther Movement.

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In that case, the document that we can't each individually empirically verify is taken as something suspicious that can't be trusted. In the Maddow clip, there's footage of Michelle Bachmann touches on exactly that when she says that the one way to verify the birth certificate is to interview the clerk who certified it ... unless he or she was paid off! Okay, the last part's mine, but if you believe everything else birthers believe, why believe that this functionary wasn't paid off?

Of course, the birthers are opening a door no one can get through. If Obama's birth certificate isn't proof of his US birth, whose is? Why should we accept Romney or Bachmann's birth certificates as valid?