“Like most other human beings, Canadians want it both ways. We want through formal nationalism to escape the disadvantages of the American dream; yet we also want to the benefits of junior membership in the empire.”

In light of the recent Scottish referendum, Lament for a Nation seemed somewhat appropriate, a Canadian classic on fears about cultural hegemony. It’s written by one of the foremost Canadian political philosophers (confession: that isn’t a large comparison group, but he’s still very good), and in Lament George Grant worries about the future of Canada and its possible end as a sovereign state due to US cultural encroachment.

His thesis is that with technology, cultural differences are almost impossible to maintain: economies must modernize to participate in the world, but as you modernize education and culture, you lose what makes you distinct. Even worse, he argues, early capitalism had restraint because of cultural restrictions: a Protestant work ethic, a British sense of self-restraint. In the age of technology such restraints disappear, and capitalism goes unchecked. Modern conservatives are thus doomed because to be popular they must accept technology, but to do so, they are no longer conservatives.

It’s a classic of small-c conservatism. In some ways, it’s interesting because that voice is diminished in modern politics, where the choice can often be between social liberals and economic liberals (in the traditional sense of liberal, not the American left-wing sense). Though Canada has to some extent preserved its culture, current Middle Eastern politics are in some sense a response to the same feelings of insecurity against American cultural hegemony. There may, of course, be things we like about American culture, such as human rights or individual freedom, but the question of how to encourage their adoption without making cultures feel attacked is fundamental, at both an individual and social level.