Richard Avramenko is Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of Courage: The Politics of Life and Limb (2011), and has co-edited books on Friendship and Politics (2008), Dostoevsky's Political Thought (2013), and Aristocratic Souls in Democratic Times (2018).
Lee Trepanier is Professor of Political Science at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. He is the author and editor of several books and the editor of Lexington Books series Politics, Literature, and Film.
Introduction: What is Canadian Conservative Political Thought? Part 1: A Founding of a Nation among Strangers 1. "Little Platoons and Ancient Traditions": Edmund Burke's Critique of Imperialism and Contemporary North American Indigenous Anti-Colonialism 2. Praying Alone: Tocqueville on the Present State and Probable Future of Quebec 3. John Strachan's Loyalist Political Thought: Tocqueville's "Aristocratic Mores Without Aristocrats" 4. The Sacred Temple of Truth: Thomas D'Arcy McGee's Civic Nationalism 5. Canadian Conservatism and National Developmentalism: Sir John A. Macdonald's Hamiltonian Persuasion Part 2: High Toryism, Liberalism, and Globalism 6. The High Tory Conservatism of Eugene Forsey and John Farthing 7. Globalist Nihilism, Liberal Relativism, and Tutorialist Statecraft: A Critique of Janet Ajzenstat's Canadian Political Philosophy 8. Ajzenstat Versus the Oligarchs 9. Charles Taylor's Interculturalism and the Crisis of Liberalism 10. "Even More Than International": Brock Chisholm and the Origins of Canadian Globalist Thought Part 3: Culture, Technology, and Place 11. Marshall McLuhan: Canadian Political Philosophy for the Digital Age 12. History as Progress or Reversal? The Mythical Prognostications of Kojève and McLuhan 13. George Grant, Time, and Eternity 14. Of Homesteaders and Orangemen: An Archeology of Western Canadian Political Identity 15. Globalization through Rose-Tinted Glasses: Schitt's Creek and the Power of Civic Virtue 16. Sources for Renewal for Canadian Conservatism
This book corrects an imbalance in Canadian political literature through offering a conservative account of Canadian political thought.
Across 15 chronologically organized chapters, and with a mixture of established and rising scholars, the book offers an investigation of the defining features and characteristics of Canadian conservative political thought, asking what have Canadian conservative political thinkers and practitioners learned from other traditions and, in turn, what have they contributed to our understanding of conservative political thought today?
Rather than its culmination, Canadian Conservative Political Thought will be the beginning of conservative political thought's recovery and will spark debates and future research. The book will be a great resource for courses on Canadian politics, history, political philosophy and conservatism, Canadian Studies, and political theory.