Brian Lee Crowley: Why George Grant was wrong about pretty much everything

But on the other hand, it has given us stunning knowledge of the inner and outer cosmos, instantaneous communication, the eradication of diseases, vast computing power, extended life spans, and an unprecedented increase in the planet’s carrying capacity to match humanity’s increasing numbers. Technology presents challenges, but all things considered, it is a huge boon for humanity. Since individualism and technology are poison to Grant’s communitarian conservatism, he shuns America, the main fountainhead of those values. Ironically, the U.S., unlike Canada, constantly debates many of the issues, whose importance Grant thought liberal modernity was busy erasing: abortion, euthanasia, divorce, family, community, and national identity, to name just a few. The main challenge of modernity is actually to humanize—to place limits on—individualism and technology, to strive to enjoy their benefits while policing their dangers. Real conservatism is alive and well in America because it asks questions that even technology-addicted Americans understand must be asked. Grant wants to duck out of the modernity rat race, and doesn’t mind paying the price of being a poorer, less dynamic country as a result. Yet there is no escaping modernity, and Grant’s prescription is worse than the disease he has diagnosed. Since modernity is inescapable, Grant’s lament cannot be for a single nation and the book Canadian nationalists revere is deeply misunderstood by them: Grant’s argument, at its core, is that conservatism has been defeated by the modern world. The 1963 Canadian election was its last local gasp. Canada’s place in the world  Grant has his history wrong. He argues that ever since the rebellion in the 13 colonies to our south, Canadians have been striving to create a kinder, gentler, less emotionally incontinent society. That’s fair enough, but it only goes so far. He takes his argument well past what the historical record will bear. When the United Empire Loyalists flooded into Ontario and the Saint John Valley, they brought with them American ideas of individualism and democracy. While they were loyal to the Crown, they nonetheless did not discard the New World’s hope for a democratic society free from aristocrats and ruling cliques. They prized Locke and Kant more than Plato and Aristotle. When my Irish ancestors, Laurence and Honora Crowley, got off the boat in the 1820s, they came to escape toil and vulnerability at the hands of unaccountable rulers. They wanted freedom, order, and property rights, not to tug their forelock as the magistrate rode by. Our relationship with America was always one of love leavened by envy and fear. Grant lauds the inward-looking National Policy of Sir John A. Macdonald as an exercise of Canadian sovereignty, protecting a more conservative Canada from brash America. But he forgets that that policy was a reaction to the Americans abrogating the reciprocity (i.e., free trade) agreement between the Province of Canada and the U.S.. Macdonald always thought that the National Policy was a poor second best to free trade. And during the Confederation debates, he always had his copy of the Federalist Papers in his pocket. As a young country, Canada’s choices never included going it alone, but instead which liberal-individualist technology incubator empire we would hitch our wagon to. We long played Britain and America off against each other. Britain finally faltered irrecoverably following the Second World War; we had little choice but to cozy up to America. This has come with costs. But those costs are seriously outweighed by the benefits, Donald Trump notwithstanding. Bucolic fantasies about Jane Austenesque squires and seigneurs, yeomen and habitants resisting the siren call of American excess seem to me a profoundly unserious approach to Canada’s place in the world. Those who fantasize today about throwing in our lot with distant, feckless, and ineffectual Europe are thus Grant’s rightful inheritors. Canadian sovereignty  That brings me to Lament’s third and final theme: Diefenbaker’s refusal to host American nuclear weapons. Grant takes Diefenbaker’s subsequent electoral defeat as proof of the unbearable frailty of Canadian sovereignty. But he takes it as self-evident that this policy was the right use of Canadian sovereignty. That’s nonsense. In 1962, the world came to the brink of war over the Soviet Union planting nuclear missiles in Cuba. This seriously frightened our neighbours, who sought to shore up their defences. In this effort, they sought Canadian participation, not least because the shortest distance between the two superpowers was over Canadian territory. Diefenbaker had already enraged Washington with his hesitant, somewhat hostile reaction to Kennedy’s naval blockade of Cuba. Given the importance to Canada of both the defence and the economic relationship between our two countries, and our enthusiastic membership of the anti-Soviet camp internationally, repairing our relationship by accepting the American missiles was a perfectly defensible, perhaps even necessary policy. Sovereignty is not a good in itself, but an instrument. It means we get to decide how to use our resources in pursuit of our interests. Pearson and Diefenbaker presented their alternative policies to the voters, who then decided who best reflected their interests. And our sovereignty remained intact, as Jean Chretien demonstrated decades later when he refused to follow America into Iraq. An unnecessary lament  Grant is right that a strong current of conservatism flows through Canadians’ veins. He is wrong, however, to frame the tension with liberalism as an “either/or proposition.” Canada’s mix of conservatism and liberalism may be a heady brew, but it is our own, and neither current ever wins a definitive victory, only momentary tactical advantages. As the Bard might have said, Canadians’ lives are made of mingled yarn, good and ill together. So far, neither facet of our complex character need be lamented.