The New York Times has a hilarious article concerning the origin or the word “maverick”. I didn’t know that it comes from an actual person, Samuel Augustus Maverick, and his descendants, who have a long history of being (big surprise) Liberals!
Samuel himself left Boston after he got into trouble over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants. He moved to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle — the unbranded cattle were known as “Maverick’s”. Eventually, the word came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand.
Sam’s grandson carried on the family tradition. Maury Maverick was a two-term congressman from San Antonio who was labelled by local conservatives as a Communist. He also served in the Roosevelt administration, and coined the word “gobbledygook” to describe the convoluted language of bureaucrats.
Maury’s son was a civil libertarian and lawyer who defended draft resisters and atheists and was called “one of the last of the red-hot liberals”. He was known for his fiery columns in the San Antonio newspaper. His final column before he died in 2003 denounced the coming war in Iraq.
Other Mavericks have served on local boards of the ACLU. Considering the politics of the Maverick family, the following quote from Terrellita Maverick should come as no surprise to anyone:
[McCain] is in no way a maverick, in uppercase or lowercase. It’s just incredible — the nerve! — to suggest that he’s not part of that Republican herd. Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again.’ He’s a Republican, He’s branded.
No wonder a new Rolling Stone article calls McCain a “Make-Believe Maverick”.
