Abstract

To George Grant, American conservatives were but right-wing liberals: agents of technological imperialism who threatened Canadian nationhood. Yet Grant never engaged with the seminal American conservative Russell Kirk, a self-styled “Bohemian Tory.” Kirk championed the classical and Christian inheritance, critiqued foreign adventurism, and (like Grant) resigned in protest from a technological multiversity in 1959. Might a dialogue with Kirk have softened Grant’s critique of America? Despite their commonalities, this chapter answers in the negative. Where Kirk saw the Burkean British inheritance as the source of American order, Grant saw the most liberal of traditions. Where Kirk saw American capitalism as a bulwark against modern radicalism, Grant saw a dissolvent of the traditional virtues. Where Kirk saw American liberty as enabling virtue, Grant saw an inversion of their proper ordering. Hence, Grant might conclude that even this professed anti-liberal American Tory could not escape—or even recognize—his own liberalism.