“Modern civilization makes all local cultures anachronistic,” wrote Canadian political philosopher George Grant (1918–1988) in his Lament for a Nation (1965). Grant, who regarded English-speaking Canada’s culture as essentially British, regretted what he considered to be the former country’s dissolution from a nation to a mere part of the U.S., through military, economic, and political relationships in which it was the weaker partner. Like Grant with Canada, most U.S. conservatives regarded...