Lament for a Nation

by George Parkin Grant, Andrew Potter (Introduction), Peter Emberley (Foreword)

Canadians have relatively few binding national myths, but one of the most pervasive and enduring is the conviction that the country is doomed. In 1965 George Grant passionately defended Canadian identity by asking fundamental questions about the meaning and future of Canada’s political existence. In Lament for a Nation he argued that Canada – immense and underpopulated, defined in part by the border, history, and culture it shares with the United States, and torn by conflicting loyalties to Britain, Quebec, and America – had ceased to exist as a sovereign state. Lament for a Nation became the seminal work in Canadian political thought and Grant became known as the father of Canadian nationalism. This edition includes a major introduction by Andrew Potter that explores Grant’s arguments in the context of changes in ethnic diversity, free trade, globalization, post-modernism, and 9/11. Potter discusses the shifting uses of the terms “liberal” and “conservative” and closes with a look at the current state of Canadian nationalism.

Genres: Politics, History, Canada, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Cultural, American History

99 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

George Parkin Grant was a Canadian philosopher, professor, and political commentator. He is best known for his Canadian nationalism, political conservatism, and his views on technology, pacifism and Christian faith. He is often seen as one of Canada's most original thinkers.

Academically, his writings express a complex meditation on the great books, and confrontation with the great thinkers, of Western Civilization. His influences include the "ancients" such as Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine of Hippo, as well as "moderns" like Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Leo Strauss, James Doull, Simone Weil, and Jacques Ellul.

Although he is considered the main theoretician of Red Toryism, he expressed dislike of the term when applied to his deeper philosophical interests, which he saw as his primary work as a thinker. Recent research on Grant uncovers his debt to a neo-Hegelian idealist tradition, Canadian idealism, that had a major influence on many Canadian scholars and Canadian political culture more broadly.

Reviews

[Judson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, the book's title is a little bit misleading. Yes, a lot of it is about events in Canada's recent history. However, it offers a rich perspective on what American imperialism is like from someone who is not American and doesn't agree with the homogenization of the world. Also, chapter 5 is one of the greatest perspectives on political philosophy that has come out of the 20th century. Plus, Grant offers some perspective as a Christian on how the age of progress should be viewed from a religious standpoint. Everyone should read this book.

[Szplug · Rating 3 out of 5]

George P. Grant bringing down the mid-sixties nationalist hammer with a fury even as he conceded that this fine northern nation was doomed to subsumption within the United States, that North American dynamo forever drawing its lesser neighbors within by the centripetal forces of its Lockean-based liberalism and continental preponderance. Grant, a prototypical Red Tory, had been a strong supporter of John Diefenbaker, the populist Conservative politician from Saskatchewan who, in an unlikely sequence of elections, had unseated the ruling Liberal elite who had been managing the Canadian state in firm bureaucratic manner for the preceding twenty-three years. Lament opens with the author vigorously defending Diefenbaker's principles and courage whilst excoriating his competence and tactics, and lamenting the fact that, even with an alliance between the conservative and socialist factions of twentieth-century Canada, the universalist and Yankee-loving bureaucrats, businessmen, and military chiefs huddled en masse in Central Canada would inevitably succeed in achieving—by directing—the dismemberment of the former Dominion within that inexorable, rights-based, nihilistically-backwashed drive towards liberal empire. This drive was powered by technology, scientific progress eminently slotted for attachment to and direction of an efficiency-chasing liberalism, a means-based mastery of nature that further churned the mud of an emotion-driven, contractual and utilitarian set of values whilst burying any belief in an enduring and universal good set at a level above the freedom-maximizing individual. In the cold-war dominated anterior half of the century, Grant could see no way to remove Canada from the pull of this overwhelming current—and thus saw the final ties with his beloved Britain poised to be severed for good, his country's traditional intermingling of populism and conservatism tethered to a pragmatic government providing law and order together with a bevy of bedrock services—all enacted to promote community stability in order to strive towards a greater good—to be buried beneath the weight of the avaricious big business and overbearing military bureaucracy looming along the forty-ninth parallel in anticipation of Canada's inevitable annexation by the United States.

Lament for a Nation finds a brilliant and despairing Anglican philosophical conservative channeling Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Ellul in crafting a polemical broadside that would redound across the country. What's more, Andrew Potter's introduction is a superb bit of analytical commentary in and of itself. Obviously, Grant's prediction of doom has not been effected, but there is much of interest to be found in this brief work; perhaps, in the end, he will be proved to have been erroneous in his calculation of the timeframe, not the outcome.

[Stefanie Lozinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel purely blessed that I stumbled across this book at a thrift shop. I’m not sure I would have heard of it otherwise, as I’m not usually very into Canadian history or Canadian politics. This book managed to explain why, as well as to motivate me to re-engage with the history unfolding around me (though it seems the author had no such intention).

I’ve been lamenting this country for quite a long time, before I could put my finger on why. There’s a real sense of doom in a place where our only identity seems to be “at least we’re not like that tax collector!” (America, of course). You are not allowed to be proud of being a Canadian in the virtuous, patriotic sense - to be so is racist, sexist, colonialist, and what have you. You’re only allowed to be proud in the wicked sense.

Now, we see that even that is changing. Now, it’s become mainstream to say that you must not celebrate Canada Day, because Canada committed genocide against Indigenous peoples (we did no such thing, but that’s irrelevant). You must not proclaim our superiority to Americans, as We Did Evil Things Too and have no excuse.

It would seem we’re getting closer to giving up our sin of pride for something even worse. Does such a thing exist? I’m scared of what that might look like.

If only I could get a coffee with George Grant, he would probably have it figured out already.

[Dustin Resch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gave this 5/5, not because it was so persuasive, but because it was so provocative. I am sure that historians, political scientists, and philosophers of all stripes will find much to argue with in Grant’s little book. However, for kindling to light debates (even within oneself!), this book is a potent accelerant indeed. At the very least, I’m inspired to read more of George Grant, and that’s got to count for something!

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grant basically states that English speaking Canadian culture no longer exists and that we've become offshoots of American states. He however doesn't state if he thinks this is good or bad, or if the consequences are good or bad, but that because of Canada's position as the neighbor to one of the most powerful countries on earth it was bound to happen. He makes alot of references to the political climate of the time but it's not necessary to know them past the background info he provides to understand the point he's trying to make. This is definitely an interesting work worth reading but I don't think you should ascribe any sort of value judgement to what he's saying unless you were someone born in his time.

All ruling classes are produced by the societies they are required to rule. In the 1960s, state capitalism organizes a technological North America. The ruling classes are those that control the private governments (that is, the corporations) and those that control the public government which co-ordinates the activities of these corporations. North America is the base of the world's most powerful empire to date, and this empire is in competition with other empires. The civilians an soldiers who run its military operations increasingly crowd its corridors of power.

The keystone of a Canadian nation is the French fact; the slightest knowledge of history makes this platitudinous. English-speaking Canadians who desire the survival of their nation have to co-operate with those who seek the continuance of Franco-American civilization....There was one aspect of Deifenbaker's nationalism that was repugnant to thoughtful French Canadians, however attractive to English-speaking Liberals and New Canadians. He appealed to one united Canada, in which individuals are concerned, this is obviously an acceptable doctrine. Nevertheless, the rights of the individual do not encompass the rights of nations liberal doctrine to the contrary. The French Canadians has entered Confederation not to protect the rights of the individual but the rights of a nation. They did not want to be swallowed up by the sea which Henri Bourassa had called "l'americanisme saxonisant."

One distinction between Canada and the United States has been the belief that Canada was predicated on the rights of nations as well as on the rights of individuals.....American society has always demanded that all autonomous communities be swallowed up into the common culture. This was demanded during the Civil War; it was demanded of each immigrant; it is still the basis of the American school system. Deifenbaker appealed to a principle that was more American than Canadian. On this principle, the French Canadians might as well be asked to be homogenized straight into the American Republic.

In no society is it possible for many men to live outside the dominant assumptions of their world for very long. Where can people lean independent views, when newspapers and television throw at them only processed opinions? In a society of large bureaucracies, power is legitimized by conscious and unconscious processes....The democratic idea of the free man making up his mind to create the society of his choice as he casts his ballot may have had meaning at some moments in history, but it can hardly apply in as dynamic a society as Southern Ontario.

Capitalism is after all, a way of life based on the principle that the most important activity is profit-making. That activity led the wealthy in the direction of continentalism. They lost nothing essential to the principle of their lives in losing their country. It is this very fact that has made capitalism the great solvent of all tradition in the modern era. When everything is made relative to profit-making, all traditions of virtue are dissolved, including that aspect of virtue known as love of country. This is why liberalism is the perfect ideology for capitalism. It demolishes those taboos that restrain expansion. Even the finest talk about internationalism opens markets for the powerful.

Bourgeois Protestantism, with its Catholic and Jewish imitations, have survived in the United States and give some sense of the eternal to many people. Nevertheless, these traditions- no longer the heart of American civilization- become more residual every year. Skeptical liberalism becomes increasingly the dominant ideology of those who shape society; and, as it was argued earlier, this ideology is the extreme form of progressive modernity. The United States is no longer a society of small property owners, but of massive private and public corporations. Such organizations work with the scientists in their efforts to master nature and reshape humanity. Internationally, the imperial power of these corporations has destroyed indigenous cultures in every corner of the globe. Communist imperialism is more brutally immediate, but American capitalism has shown itself more subtly able to dissolve indigenous societies. This can make it harder to resist than the blatant thrusts of the Russians or the Chinese.

The Americans who call themselves "Conservatives" have the right to the title only in a particular sense. In fact, they are old-fashioned liberals. They stand for the freedom of the individual to use his property as he wishes, and for a limited government which must keep out of the marketplace. Their concentration on freedom from governmental interference has more to do with nineteenth-century liberalism than with traditional conservatism, which asserts the right of the community to restrain freedom in the name of the common good...They are "consercataives" only in terms of the short history of their own country. They claim that the authentic American tradition went off the rails with the mass liberalism of the New Deal and should return to the individualism of the founding fathers....Their rallying cry was "freedom." There was no place in their cry for the organic conservatism that pre-dated the age of progress. Indeed, the United States is the only society on earth that has no traditions from before the age of progress. Their "right-wing and "left-wing" are just different species of liberalism.

Canadians had memories of a conservative tradition that was more than covert liberalism. At their best, Canadian conservatives never stood on an abstract appeal to free enterprise. They were willing to use the government to protect the common good. They were willing to restrain the individual's freedom in the interests of the community.

...the imposiblity of conservatism as a viable political ideology in our era. The practical men who call themselves conservatives must commit themselves to a science that leads to the conquest of nature. This science produces such a dynamic society that it is impossible to conserve anything for long. In such an environment, all institutions and standards are constantly changing. Conservatives who attempt to be practical face a dilemma. If they are not committed to a dynamic technology, they cannot hope to be conservatives.

[Patrick Ashurst · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tendebantque manus ripae ulterious amore. (They were holding their arms outstretched in love toward the further shore.) - Virgil, Aeneid (Book VI)

Capitalism is, after all, a way of life based on the principle that the most important activity is profit making. That activity led the wealthy in the direction of continentalism. They lost nothing essential to the principle of their lives in losing their country.

Liberalism was, in origin, criticism of the old established order. Today it is the voice of the establishment. It could sound a purer note when it was voice of the outsider than today when it is required to legislate freedom.

Lamentation is not an indulgence in despair or cynicism. In a lament for a child’s death, there is not only pain and regret, but also a celebration of passed goods.

[Lindsay Harvey · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was read under duress for a poli sci course. Would not recommend.

[Andrew Figueiredo · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Lament for a Nation" is half rumination on the downfall of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and half political philosophy. I'm left somewhere between 4 and 5 stars. Grant is largely sympathetic to Diefenbaker as the last grasp at Canadian nationhood unmoored from the American empire (as he calls it). Diefenbaker refused to place nuclear weapons on Canadian soil and more broadly resisted the call of continentalism, angering intellectuals and business elites. But this project was doomed by the time Dief came around; sharing a continent with the US, accepting a branch plant economy during WWII, and not placing enough value on independent Canadian nationhood were all bound to dismantle Canada as a distinct national entity. The Canadian elite and civil servants were not grounded in nationalism and therefore pursued continentalism, with the Liberal party smoothing the glide path of modernity.

To Grant, the ill-fated PM, despite his idiosyncrasies such as admiring FDR but choosing ministers more devoted to the free-market line, symbolized a fading legacy of Canadian politics. This tradition was a conservatism more devoted to the common good than to unrestrained individualism, in part a leftover from the loyalists who left the nascent United States (63-64). Grant's attachment to the nation, founded in the importance of particularity, faces the great threat of a "universal and homogenous state" sought by liberal capitalism. He decries global capitalism as the "great solvent of all tradition in the modern era" (46), attached to a liberalism bent on abolishing "those taboos that restrain expansion" of the capitalist order (47). Grant sees liberalism as rejecting teleology in favor of a relativistic outlook predicated on negative liberty (Potter intro xl-xlii).

Grant is no anti-liberal, but a 'Red Tory' cognizant of its atomizing and flattening tendencies. As Andrew Potter notes, Grant simply doesn't believe that liberalism is a "complete theory of the human good" (xxxix). He even strikes a Laschian note by pointing to a more fundamental faith in technology as incompatible with tradition and nationalism. I was mildly surprised he got no mention in The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics for this powerful critique of progress. In seeking to dismantle barriers to negative liberty and reshape nature, such devotion to progress-by-tech leads to “increasing outbreaks of impersonal ferocity, the banality of existence in technological societies, and the pursuit of expansion as an end in itself” (92), outcomes we see blowing up today. On the technology points, Andrew Potter's introduction is especially useful, illuminating how "Lament for a Nation" fits into Grant's greater body of work and demonstrating how the author relies on Ellul's criticisms of technological society, which the French philosopher called "technique". Perhaps Ellul and Grant are too deterministic and negative on tech but social media suggests they were at least partly right.

I don't entirely fault Grant for not foreseeing the twists Canadian politics would take over the decades, but his predictions seem exaggerated in hindsight. CBC remains well-watched, Canada asserted itself in contrast with the US during the Trump administration, nobody sought to join the US outside of Parti 51 (not a joke, although their results were laughable). Then again, can we blame Grant for sounding a semi-hyperbolic note in what he chose to call a "Lament"? The emotional tone of this work wouldn't be the same if he wrote it flatly, without love for his particular corner of the universe. Also, perhaps "Lament for a Nation" to some degree raised the left's national consciousness and bred a shift in Canadian politics. After all, members of the New Left took "Lament for a Nation" to heart more than most Tories, which is why the latter ended up with Brian Mulroney and supportive of free trade in 1988.

Dief's example helps ground Grant's criticisms of liberal modernity, although the linkage between both could use slightly more explanation. It would be good to know how American culture had spilled over the border by the 1950s and 1960s and impacted its Canadian counterparts. Nonetheless, Grant's reflections on progress, modernity, and globalization are valuable reading.

[Phil Cotnoir · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was overdue to read this 'classic' of Canadian conservatism.

It helped to make sense of the differences between American conservatism and British conservatism. Specifically, the libertarian streak one finds in American conservatism which is absent in the British stream. Rather, with the good of the community as the central concern, in contrast to the rights and freedoms of the individual, British conservatism is comfortable with a larger role for government, and more restraints on the free market. The idea that the market automatically produces the best possible solution for all parties is foreign to this approach. As Grant points out more than once in the book, it was conservative Canadian government which formed the CBC and the national railways.

There were a number of insightful discussions of technology and modernity, along the lines of Jacques Ellul (who I am also currently reading for the first time). Grant argues that modernity dissolves all cultural differences, a point made by many others, but which time borne out. At times he even seems to say that the loss of a truly independent Canada, as he sees it, was inevitable given the ongoing technological revolution whose beating heart was the United States.

In this edition, Andrew Potter gives a lengthy but helpful introduction.

[Kailea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Holy cow I do not have the background knowledge to be able to absorb and understand this book properly. Despite that, and the massive slog it was to get through, I picked up a lot of things I thought were interesting. Comparing the perspective Grant had almost 60 years ago with the happenings of today was fascinating, and the philosophical musings were entertaining. I may have to read this again in another decade or so. Maybe I'll understand a little more in that time.

[Margareta · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh.

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a newcomer to Canada, a fascinating and educational read. A little heavy on the classical references for me, and very much of its time (the 1960s - I need to read more about the historical setting) but nonetheless a useful tool for understanding more about the country where I live.

[Calvin Stevenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is pessimism really the only critique of this essay? Seems every day Canada converges closer and closer to his predictions…

[Robert Heckner · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely important book politically, philosophically, and theologically. It is at once historical and prophetic. It requires close and repeated reading and studying.

[Robert Jeens · Rating 4 out of 5]

"This lament mourns the end of Canada as a sovereign state." George Grant contended that the 1963 election marked the final defeat of a sovereign Canada to the overwhelming power of the United States. When Mike Pearson’s Liberals beat John Diefenbaker’s Conservatives, the issue was whether Canada should have nuclear weapons. Pearson sided with U.S. President John Kennedy in supporting the placement of nuclear weapons on Canadian soil. For Grant, this capitulation to the American Empire marked the effective end of Canadian political independence.

1963 did not mark the end of Canada as a sovereign state, but the book raises some of the most important issues in Canadian politics from the beginning until now. The introduction by Andrew Potter fleshes out Grant’s thoughts about these issues, puts them in a 1965 context, and analyses some of his later writings to look at how his ideas culminated. Because of that introduction, I am going to leave aside some of the broad topics of the book. For me to criticize them now is to critique broad 1960s intellectual thought with the benefit of hindsight.

But I would like to analyze three of Grant’s points which seem to me to be very important for Canada’s survival from 1965 to 2025 and possibly beyond. Firstly, Canada’s conservatives are different from American conservatives in two important ways. Canadian conservatives have been more willing to embrace the power of the Canadian state to keep Canada independent. Secondly, the roots of Canadian conservatism have roots in pre-Enlightenment thought, unlike American conservatives, who generally uphold the principles of Smith and Locke. And lastly, these pre-Enlightenment ideas have had a great impact on the way that Canada has come to deal with minorities. And if I am correct about all this, then it may that the reason that Grant was fundamentally wrong about Canada losing its sovereignty to the United States may have much to do with Canadian conservative traditions.

From the beginning, the Conservative Party understood that the survival of Canada requires "concentrated use of Ottawa's planning and control." Thus John A. Macdonald’s National Policy, which created the Canadian National Railway and high tariff barriers to allow Canadian manufacturing to develop. Other creations of Canadian Conservatives were Ontario Hydro, the Bank of Canada, and the CBC. Grant points out that Diefenbaker and those around him agreed with Macdonald’s ideas about the need for the promotion of east-west rather than north-south connections. Diefenbaker attended Commonwealth conferences and upheld the Canadian connection to the sovereign not only symbolically, but also he tried to leverage that into trade deals. To update this to today, Prime Minister Carney’s “Nation-building projects” bill is a direct reflection of the National Policy. The proposed dismantling of provincial trade barriers is an important part of this. I have to believe that Carney knows enough of Canadian history to understand this and I also believe that Pierre Poilievre, the direct heir to John A Macdonald as the leader of the Canadian Conservative Party, also knows this and that is one of the reasons he supports it.

Unlike the United States’ enlightenment-era political traditions, Canadian political thought can be traced back to the pre-Enlightenment. Canadian political traditions have much of the Enlightenment about them. We have ideas of human rights, we know the traditions of the American and French Revolutions, and we trace our Parliament to the mother of all Parliaments in England, a quintessentially moderate Enlightenment institution. And yet, English Canada was founded by the Loyalists, those cast-offs of the American Revolution. They rejected the democratic, liberal, utopian experiment in favor of restraining freedom in the name of hierarchy, order, and the common good. This “ethic of self-restraint” in favor of a more ordered but less dynamic society is a notion that has remained popular in Canada. Peace, order and good government rather than life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Today, Canada has more curbs on free speech, environmental threats, and generally on allowing private enterprise to hinder the public good than the United States. The fact that these are ideas that are more popular now on the left side of the political spectrum should not blind us to the fact that the genesis of the idea comes from a set of people who explicitly rejected the Enlightenment spirit.

Canada’s treatment of minorities blends the American emphasis on individual rights with a more ancient royalist and imperialist playbook. When Genghis Khan came to town, he didn’t care if you had a democracy or a theocracy, were socialist or free market. He only needed you to acknowledge that he was in charge and that you were going to pay taxes. This is the general playbook of imperialists. You let communities govern themselves as much as possible, you allow different relationships with the Crown, and different communities have different rights and responsibilities. "Canada was predicated on the rights of nations as well as the rights of individuals." One of Confederation’s most literate fathers, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, stated that it was Canada's defense of those rights that made it a better polity than the emphasis on the homogeneous treatment of equal citizens in the United States. In Canada, there can be state-financed schools for religious or linguistic minorities. The basis of Confederation was a balance of the collective rights of French Canadians to continue their culture and polity within a larger Canadian state. These days, there is much talk of Indigenous rights to self-government and the rights of indigenous peoples as opposed to universal human rights for all. Although this is always dressed up rhetorically as decolonization, in fact imperialists have historically had no problem with this situation.

One of the most important insights of this book is an emphasis on the historically conservative roots of Canadian anti-Americanism. From the times that the United States invaded Quebec looking for support but could not find it, to the Loyalist influx into English Canada, to the broad support for the Crown as a counter pose to the Americans, conservatives formed the bedrock of Canadian anti-Americanism until the 1960s. The Family Compact in Upper Canada explicitly rejected American democracy and liberalism. Into the 1950s, Canadian right-wing commentators regularly decried American capitalist consumer culture. Unfortunately, by the early 1960s even British statesmen regarded the attitude of these Canadians as of lesser importance than the realpolitik of accommodating American power. Grant lamented the final defeat of that movement in the 1963 election as the end of Canadian sovereignty.

What Grant did not foresee was that, after the Vietnam War and Watergate, the left in Canada would take over the anti-American argument. In doing so, they generally accepted the originally conservative point that “To be a Canadian was to build...a more ordered and stable society than the liberal experiment of the United States." But now left-wing projects such as universal health care, abortion, and child care tax credits would be used in the support of the idea of Canada as a better country than the USA. Is it left wing or right wing to be an anti-American?

This is one of the most important books in Canadian political thought. An understanding of Grant’s ideas really enhances one’s understanding of Canada’s political actors. It is clear as day why Prime Minister Carney invited King Charles to open parliament. He was emphasizing our different political traditions, traditions that, unlike Grant’s gloomy declaration, have kept us independent for the past sixty years since the book was published. We understand why indigenous leaders cherish their relationships with the Crown. Why we find it easier to accommodate minorities with different rules. I am not sure whether or not our blend of pre-Enlightenment and Enlightenment traditions leads to better outcomes than the United States. But I have come to realize that it is one of the reasons that we are still an independent country.

[Jacob Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish Canadian Tories would read Grant instead of whatever it is they've got now. It's weirdly prophetic of the increasing integration of the Canadian state and society into the Americans imperial project, and prescient about the liberalisation of the former Red Tory tradition.

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grant, George. Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1965 [reprint] 2007.

I can’t vouch for how accurate Grant’s summary of Canadian nationalism (more on that term later) is. As Americans, we don’t know much about Canada. Before we should begin we should clear up what we mean by “nationalism.” Nationalism doesn’t mean “my country is great and everyone else is stupid,” nor does it mean use the American military to invade (and then invite) the world. That is Neo-Conservatism, and it is the enemy of nationalism. Nationalism means that linguistic, geo-political entities are real and have a real right to exist. If we reject this view, then the nation will then be subject to other forces, such as the United Nations, international corporations, or Communist China (or all three, as controlled by Communist China).

Grant’s argument is that Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker formally and culturally lost Canada around 1963, as non-liberals in Canada couldn’t give a good reason to deny Kennedy’s demand to place nuclear warheads on Canadian soil (the implication, among other things, is that if you can’t make your own military decisions, you really aren’t a sovereign country).

Moreover, Canada found itself involved in the Michigan-Ohio manufacturing economy. This meant that Canada had to agree to economic decisions made that would primarily benefit those states. That is another implication: if you can’t make your own economic decisions, are you really a sovereign country?

The bottom line is that by the end of the decade, corporations, and not the average citizen, were in charge of the country. (This is basically America today.) Of course, someone could counter: 1) wasn’t it necessary to oppose Soviet threats? That’s a good point and one not easily brushed aside. We should all fight to the death against Communism. I’m not sure exactly how Canadian nationalists can answer that question.
2) Doesn’t increased integration into the American economy lead to a higher standard of living for Canadians? Maybe. I really can’t answer that question, except to defer it to a later discussion of virtue and liberalism.
3) Isn’t this inevitable? Probably. Grant hints as much, hence the “Lament” in his title.

The book pivots at Chapter Five. Grant shifts from discussing Diefenbaker to the nature of techno-liberalism, and here is where he shines. His thesis is “This state will be achieved by means of modern science--a science that leads to the conquest of nature” (Grant 52). Marx, unlike Democratic Socialists today, knew that scarcity was a real phenomenon. He simply believed that technology would end it. That, of course, didn’t turn out. Liberals, also, believe in technology, but more along the lines of mastering nature. That might not seem to follow, but consider: the essence of liberalism is to reject any conception of the Good that imposes limits on human freedom” (55). Technology will help man overcome the built-in limits that threaten his freedom. In other words, it is “the faith that can understand progress as an extension into the unlimited possibility of the future” (56).

Does this mean society will be socialist or capitalist? The larger point is not that the elites think one system is better than the other. Rather, they have seen that capitalism better facilitates technological expansion. And by capitalism, we mean late capitalism. As Grant notes, early capitalism was full of moral and Puritan restraints. Later capitalism as manifested by the Playboy culture, is not

All of this, of course, is a far cry from earlier conceptions of the good and serves to illustrate Grant’s contrast between post-Lockean liberalism and older Toryism. Earlier liberals, such as the American founders, did believe in a “Good” of sorts, but it was a good for all practical purposes to safeguard the individual, not the individual safeguarding the Common Good. This means that American conservatives, no matter how well-intentioned, in wanting to get back to the Founding, can never rise above the limitations of John Locke.

The alternative to Locke, as Grant notes, is the organic, hierarchical society of Richard Hooker. I say Grant “notes” this point; he never really develops it. The various writers of the forewords to this book, however, do develop it. I say “various writers.” This book has close to 80 pages of introduction. I kid you not.

Andrew Potter notes that liberalism, whether that of Madison or Roe v. Wade, lets “Freedom” close off “any public conception of the Good” (Potter xxv). Goods are not values, and values are private. Remember, I as the individual am ultimately committed to my freedom. External focus on the Good might hinder might freedom.

By contrast, those following in the line of Hooker see society as an organic unity, “in which each part is responsible for the welfare of the whole” (xxxi). To use a modern application: the anti-masker during Covid is legitimately expressing his freedom. Liberals have attacked the idea of a transcendent Good for decades, and now they want to arbitrarily apply it. Of course, the student of Hooker should wear the mask, but he only has a good argument if he subsumes it to the common good.

Potter offers another way to look at it. Aristotle’s ethics looked for a positive theory of human excellence. Locke only sought a negative view of what was evil (xl). If the state of nature is one of inevitable death, then the government has only one goal: securing my life, liberty, and property. It might be nice if I wanted to help someone, but that is utterly irrelevant. Grant doesn’t fully develop the point, but this might be one of the reasons American conservatism has always been anemic.

As a whole, the book is well-written. I can’t attest to the historical conclusions, but his analysis of modern liberalism is on point.

[Teghan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An important text in the history of Canadian thought and how we construct the nation. It is however, a bit dated. Grant's 'lament' for the nation is one that comes from the white-male construction of what a society should look like. He laments the loss of his Canada....as women were gaining more rights and freedoms and as the population of minorities in Canada increased, Grant was becoming uncomfortable with this. The nation was changing around him.

That isn't to say this book is without value. He has many good points about Canada's relationship with the United States that are still relevant today.

Additionally, any student of Canadian Studies or communications will find this an important historical book.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting examination of Canadian nationalism....I found myself both agreeing and disagreeing with Grant and most often found myself in amazement how the 2 parties have changed over the years! It is interesting to note that this book written by the very conservative Grant was an influential document on the New Left in the 70`s.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 3 out of 5]

weird little book

he's got a reason to not like Pearson

and Dief was just too boring and difficult with Kennedy and the worst thing Diefenbaker should have done was think he could copy what Macmillian did with his stance in the whole cuban missile crisis timeframe, when Canada was hooked up with Norad and couldn't afford positions England could take by being across the ocean.

Not addressing more of the open-ended fate, might have dated the book about the mouse being absorbed by the elephant

and it's pretty amusing that that fourth-rate writer/politician Ignatieff got Grant famous again with the Carney-Trump Trade war

but ironic since Ignatieff won't mention the fact that Carney cranked up for the spending of the War Marchine like Reagan, but prefers the European Military-Industrial Complex, I guess TDS sometimes afflicts some with blindness, maybe that's it.

...............

interestingly odd comments

- There was one aspect of Deifenbaker's nationalism that was repugnant to thoughtful French Canadians, however attractive to English-speaking Liberals and New Canadians. He appealed to one united Canada, in which individuals are concerned

- The French Canadians has entered Confederation not to protect the rights of the individual but the rights of a nation.

- Where can people lean independent views, when newspapers and television throw at them only processed opinions?

- In a society of large bureaucracies, power is legitimized by conscious and unconscious processes.

- Capitalism is after all, a way of life based on the principle that the most important activity is profit-making. That activity led the wealthy in the direction of continentalism.

- When everything is made relative to profit-making, all traditions of virtue are dissolved, including that aspect of virtue known as love of country.

- This is why liberalism is the perfect ideology for capitalism. It demolishes those taboos that restrain expansion. Even the finest talk about internationalism opens markets for the powerful.

- The Americans who call themselves "Conservatives" have the right to the title only in a particular sense. In fact, they are old-fashioned liberals.

- They stand for the freedom of the individual to use his property as he wishes, and for a limited government which must keep out of the marketplace.

- Their concentration on freedom from governmental interference has more to do with nineteenth-century liberalism than with traditional conservatism, which asserts the right of the community to restrain freedom in the name of the common good.

- They are "consercataives" only in terms of the short history of their own country. They claim that the authentic American tradition went off the rails with the mass liberalism of the New Deal and should return to the individualism of the founding fathers

- Their rallying cry was "freedom." There was no place in their cry for the organic conservatism that pre-dated the age of progress.

- Indeed, the United States is the only society on earth that has no traditions from before the age of progress. Their "right-wing and "left-wing" are just different species of liberalism.


- Canadians had memories of a conservative tradition that was more than covert liberalism.

- At their best, Canadian conservatives never stood on an abstract appeal to free enterprise. They were willing to use the government to protect the common good. They were willing to restrain the individual's freedom in the interests of the community.

- Conservatives who attempt to be practical face a dilemma. If they are not committed to a dynamic technology, they cannot hope to be conservatives.

weird guy

Smarter than Pearson?
not sure

Better positions than Pearson?
definitely

More likeable than Pearson?
oh man, definitely


Pearson was like a mixture of Mr. Peabody the dog from Rocky and Bullwinkle with MGM's Droopy Dog when they weren't doing Tom and Jerry Cartoons.

Though Pearson could drink a gallon of Tom and Jerry Cocktails packed with enough brandy in that Eggnog, that Lester B. Pearson's punchbowl could poison a baby elephant.

When he wasn't puffing away on his cigarette holder like Ian Fleming (or even a Bond Villian with a lisp), trying to fuck up every superpower and conflict on the planet with his weird ways of peacemaking with the Liberal Internationalist Order.

He should have stopped worrying and Loved the Bomb, since there's only one PEACEMAKER!

And it's twelve 350 kiloton warheads

[Rick Patterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank goodness this is dated now. Grant's frankly cynical read of political reality boils down to his recognition that Canadian conservatism is the desperation of a drowning system that is being overwhelmed by American corporate internationalism. Fair enough. Nobody is seriously arguing that, especially in the twenty-first century, where clear-eyed Canadians must see that our country is indistinguishable from a colony (sell our primary products at a discount to a market that limits our trade; buy back finished products that we can't/won't produce ourselves). But, especially since this was originally composed in 1965, it seems deliberately blind for him to pay absolutely no attention to Tommy Douglas's particular contributions to the Canadian social and political ethos. Douglas (who, it should be recalled, was voted The Greatest Canadian of All Time once upon a time) is comprehensively ignored, which is a significant oversight, considering the notion of virtue is raised as an existential determinant. He observes that a "political philosophy that is centred on virtue must be a shadowy voice in a technological civilization" (72), a worthy caution, but certainly one that has been listened to, given American and Canadian difference in attitude about health care, for example. Douglas is probably responsible for that very Canadian, very nationalist distinction.
Grant could not know the impact of the 1967 Centennial and the explosion of literary and musical contributions made by Canadians then and thereafter. It is tempting to imagine his astonishment at the international impact of Atwood or Munro or Rush or Neil Young or Leonard Cohen, but it is more likely that he would have been less than enthusiastic; in fact, he only takes a moment from his political and philosophical pronouncements to swipe at our cultural pretensions (disparaging Morley Callaghan, as I recall).
Here is one of his last words on Canadian nationalism: "My purpose is not to debate at this point the question whether the 'universal' values of liberalism lead to human excellence. What is indubitable is that those values go with internationalism rather than with nationalism. In this century, many men have known that the choice between internationalism and nationalism is the same choice as that between liberalism and conservatism. In a Canadian setting, internationalism means continentalism. French-Canadian liberalism does not seem to be the means whereby this nation could have been preserved" (86). That last sentence dates the whole discussion rather poignantly, of course.
In his introduction (written in 1970) to the reprint, Grant rather pompously raises the point that some critics say "that I had no business to write of the defeat of Canadian nationalism because in so doing I may encouraged it" (xi). In fact, seeing how energetically Canada seems to have responded with health care, arts, and other social programs (again given rather short shrift by Grant), it would seem that his book has been instrumental in encouraging Canadian nationalism.

[Marco den Ouden · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent jeremiad from Canada's leading exponent of Red Toryism. The book is a lament on the loss of Canadian sovereignty with the defeat of nationalist John Diefenbaker by the continentalist Lester Pearson. Diefenbaker wanted to keep nuclear weapons off Canadian soil and this was one of the reasons for his defeat.

The book is an excellent history of the times, the politics of the 1950s and 1960s and, in my opinion, is better as history than as philosophy. There are some interesting quotes from the book, one in particular which, to my mind, captures the essential difference between Canadian and American culture. I quote it below:

“British conservatism is difficult to describe because it is less a clear view of existence than an appeal to an ill-defined past. The writings of Edmund Burke are evidence of this. Yet many of the British officials, many Loyalists, and later many immigrants felt this conservatism very strongly. It was an inchoate desire to build, in these cold and forbidding regions, a society with a greater sense of order and restraint than freedom-loving republicanism would allow. It was no better defined than a kind of suspicion that we in Canada could be less lawless and have a greater sense of propriety than the United States. The inherited determination not to be Americans allowed these British people to come to a modus vivendi with the more defined desires of the French. English-speaking Canadians have been called a dull, stodgy, and indeed costive lot. In these dynamic days, such qualities are particularly unattractive to the chic. Yet our stodginess has made us a society of greater simplicity, formality, and perhaps even innocence than the people to the south.”

There is a certain irony in that the first couple of pages lamenting the defeat of populist Diefenbaker could easily be modified to apply to Donald Trump's election. The first two sentences, changing the years and the word Canadian to American, and the names would read: "Never has such a torrent of abuse been poured on any American figure as that during the years from 2014-2016. Never have the wealthy and the clever been so united as they were in their joint attack on Mr. Donald Trump. "

Nevertheless, this is a book steeped in Canadian nationalism. If you want to understand Canadian nationalism and particularly the popularity of anti-Americanism in Canada, this book gives you a good explanation.

I just read the body of the book and not the extensive introductions which I'll have to go back to at some future date.

[Johnny H · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was turned on to this book by a Red Tory professor of mine--in fact, so red that he identifies as a Tory Communist, an idea I find fascinating. At any rate, Grant's basic argument, that the impossibility of conservatism is the impossibility of Canada, fascinates me as well. Canada is a political project doomed to failure once the British Empire comes to an end, and with the end of British Canada comes the end of Canadian culture. Absorption into the American Empire is inevitable; after all, just look at how big they are compared to us. Grant points to Pearson's granting the US permission to store nuclear weapons on Canadian soil as the point in history at which Canada became a client state of the American Empire. He provides a fascinating reading of the Diefenbaker-Pearson era whereby Diefenbaker represented the last cry of British Canada against the Liberal continentalist project, but it is a cry doomed to failure as a younger generation raised on American television no longer wants to recite "Kublai Khan" and because Diefenbaker simply didn't have a real economic alternative to continentalism now that the British Empire had been more or less dissolved. Continentalism's triumph therefore was inevitable. In the same way that Canada is impossible, conservatism is an impossible political project because, well, as de Maistre argued, by the time you need to conserve something you have already lost. In the face of capitalist modernity localism, communitarianism, aristocracy, and religion become impossible to maintain in their traditional forms.

Grant's critique of capitalist modernity is the most fascinating part of the book, but it's very hard to say what kind of economic proposals he has to get away from the problems of capitalism outside of a welfare state and some nationalizations, in other words a very British, or British North American Peronism. As a Marxist I argue that the cultural as well as economic problems of capitalism can only be dealt with through the abolition of commodity production and the law of value. Only fundamental systemic change can prevent the symptoms Grant critiques. The nationalizations he brings up are insufficient to prevent the march of capitalist modernity, and perhaps Grant is well aware given his emphasis on the impossibility of Canada. Grant identifies Diefenbaker's political failure as his insufficient economic radicalism and his reliance on his Bay Street finmin (a certain president might want to take note); Grant seems to have the same problem, but I guess this is where his conservatism is; for him fighting the losing battle to defend the culture he holds dear against the forces which seek to destroy it is a better choice than joining the socialists to destroy the destroyers. We on the left of course have a confused to say the least relationship to modernity.

Regardless of my disagreements with his Toryism and with nationalism in principle, this is a marvellous book that every Canadian should read, if for no other reason than to get into the head of a political perspective that has sadly largely disappeared from the Canadian political landscape. Furthermore, read from a political economy perspective his analysis of the Diefenbaker-Pearson era is invaluable for understanding Canada's place in the world and how it got there.

[Peter Hillson]

‘The power of the American government to control Canada does not lie primarily in its ability to exert direct pressure; the power lies in the fact that the dominant classes in Canada see themselves at one with the continent on all essential matters’

——

‘All fixed, fast-frozen relations, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind’

——

Writing in 1965, Grant’s primary argument here, (and what makes this a lament), is that Canada has ceased to be a sovereign nation. Reading in 2025, this is initially a somewhat surprising contention.

Grant’s point, however, is not that Canada has been formally subsumed or conquered, but that historical necessity has led to the economic and political homogenization of Canada into what Grant calls a ‘branch plant society’, a notionally distinct but practically integrated node of the larger North American economy.

As a small-c conservative Grant attributes this to the unfolding of liberal and technological modernity, which, (at least imo), doesn’t really get to the heart of the issue. For the less conservatively inclined, it isn’t much of a stretch to see the process he identifies, and describes quite incisively, as the expanding march of American capital.

All to say, this was a generative read in this particular moment. Grant brings a more lucid analysis of processes still relevant today than many contemporary commentators.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four score and eighteen years ago our British fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived for the common good, and dedicated to the slim proposition that not all Anglos are American.

Now we are engaged in a great continentalism, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of language. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who conceived of an Anglo-American and Latin-American alternative. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should remember this.

But in a longer sense, we can not dedicate – we can not celebrate – we can not follow – their words. The conservative men, now mostly dead, who struggled not to be American, have left us their words, but not in the American English we desire. The world will little note, nor long remember what they said in 1867, but it can never forget that size matters. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished project which they who created this nation have thus far nobly failed. It is rather for us to be dedicated to the only thing left that binds our history – that No Yank Land shall endure, and that on every map on every wall across the world, everyone will see who’s bigger – that we here highly resolve that British Canada will not have died in vain – that this nation of No Yank Land will find new differences – and that a country that looks like America and sounds like America will never waver from telling you it is not America.

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

A timeless inquiry into the notion of progress towards some human value caught by the inchoate gravity of technological progress.

Andrew Potter provides a more modern interpretation, emphasizing Grant's inner-Nietzsche:

"Grant sees Nietzsche as demonstrating the bankruptcy of the liberal notion that we could have moral absolutism within a secularized liberal framework based on the notion of a social contract. By focusing on the idea of autonomous “willing” that is at the heart of the liberal project, Nietzsche unmasked the creed’s essential nihilism. In turn, this nihilism exposes us to technological tyranny. The connection works as follows: because liberalism has the maximizing of human freedom as its central good, anything that hinders the exercise of freedom is seen as an obstacle to be removed. This has the effect of turning questions of ultimate value into matters of mere “convenience” or “quality of life.” All reasoning thus becomes “instrumental,” in that we reason only about means, not about ends. The self-interested, calculating individual who enters into the social contract is just as calculating when it comes to the pursuit of the good, but there is no sense in which “reasoning” is about discovering the good by getting it substantively right."

Perhaps the most disorienting aspect of this book is the protean meaning of 'conservatism' and 'liberalism' over these past six decades.

[Tyler Struyk · Rating 3 out of 5]

In his seminal work some of Grant's most eloquent and forceful claims for the path he saw the country on in 1965 appear to have largely been borne out. The most notable of these is his perception of Canada drifting away from the UK to become an economic and cultural limb of the United States. Despite this the emphasis he places on the Toronto-Montreal tandem vs "rural" Canada divide is not nearly as evident empirically or as influential for people of my generation as regional economic differences and socio-historical perspectives and the role of diverse identity experience in this country. This does not seem to be something Grant foresaw but in truth it might fit as a development out of what he saw as the "liberal-progressive bastion" of the US that Canada was gravitating into. However, the book suffers most from its detailed focus on specific political actors in the fifties and sixties, almost exclusively focused in Ontario, to the point it reads more as a historical snapshot in time, and one philosopher's perspective on that. Obvious why it was influential in certain circles in its day, clearly somewhat outdated now.

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it’s hard to accurately rate this book because first of all it’s nearly 60 years old and a product of its time. The language is hopelessly outdated. The religiosity of the author comes through with every word and it’s an alien concept to me and I would argue the generations after mine as well. The basis of the argument is based in a political milieu of which I have no real knowledge or opinion.

But some of his arguments and predictions have come true. Society is far more “continental” and while I get the feeling Grant would find that to be a bad thing, as a person raised very much in the age of reason and progress and technology, I cannot fathom going back to some misremembered sense of hierarchical society in the name of a nationalism that seems mostly to be about the British empire. Grant makes the argument that individual freedoms must sometimes be subservient to the public good, which I think is true, but I have the feeling we wouldn’t agree on what the public good consisted of.

[Jo-Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume was recommended to me by a fellow on the Quora question and answer website, as one that explains the meaning of conservatism, liberalism and populism. GRant does this, and more. He traces the evolution of traditional Canadian political and social thinking in a way that more fully explains what we have today, at least in my understanding. I admit that this was not an easy read for me off the starting block, but matters became clearer as the volume progressed. There is both preface and conclusion chapters that interpret George Grant's philosophical lens. Recommended for those who seek to understand how Canada got to where it is.

[Leif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unplaceable, unusual, an abandoned cul-de-sac of Canadian political philosophy - perhaps one of the ends of that genre in its most direct, colonial sense. Grant represents a dead-end of history: the anti-capitalist, communitarian conservative movement. He is as comfortable citing Karl Marx as he is fluent with the ins and outs of Canadian Ministers and their senior bureaucratic staff - and he applies the same critical gaze at each to find them wanting. There are the usual snarling reminders of the 1960s, but so too a palpable sense of reality in Grant's lively intelligence, if not in his conclusions. Those days are long gone, and so too, mostly, are those like Grant himself.