A manifesto of ignorance

Meticulously organizing my precious time each week in the mornings to get some work done before spending quality time with my family, batendo papo with friends, or enjoying a good book, you would think that e-mail newsletters were the last thing to subscribe to. Alas, given the propensity to have first-hand information on the latest publications, I tolerate the occasional bookstore-newsletter. Only, it got me all riled up recently, recommending among the bestselling non-fiction works Liberty and Tyranny by Mark R. Levin.
‘Oh well,’ you might say, ‘just another partisan-inspired manifesto’, and you sure are right about that. His diatribe against liberal policies was almost fun to read for revealing the preconceptions and bias of his conservative argumentation. However, what drew my ire was the fact that the book presents a cacophony of oh so bigot, colonial, imperialist deliberations. The reader is impressed upon with the thought that America, prior to founding, was settled by people mostly from Europe – and that pertains to the matter of Native America so benevolently obnubilated in Levin’s tirade. For all that he is so concerned about America’s civil society, he disregards his own standards and duty as an individual of that society, to “respect the unalienable rights of others and the values, customs, and traditions, tried and tested over time and passed from one generation to the next, that establish society’s cultural identity.” (3) Of course, he is only talking about settler-colonial identity and European values in this context.
‘Ah, but that was to be expected from such a writer’, is what you interject, and I agree. But when I read such a testimony of essentialist doctrine, calling for an end to “multiculturalism, diversity, and bilingualism”, I do think it is time to unsubscribe from those convenient email newsletters …