Kevin Michael Grace talked about "my country (Canada)" in his email to me and in his Vdare article. Yet, he brought no insights, merely predictions of doom, for his country after his two-year absence. I will continue to wait with anticipation what Grace offers to the discussion - what else can he say after this? I hope something better.
I think Grace's presence has been an important one in Canadian blogging and alternate news. I have always respected his views. I've emailed him twice, once on general immigration and multiculturalism issues, another time to wish him well on his apparent illness. I never got any response from him for either correspondence.
It's interesting that he should email me this time in response to my post on the whereabouts of conservatives, and not to any email I sent. But, I don't think it was really to communicate with me, but rather to set his name straight - that he is not a nihilist but merely a pessimist. I believe that if this post had been left on my blog, he wouldn't have bothered to respond; it was instead linked at a popular conservative website that he clearly reads.
He hasn't responded to my long (third) email explaining my conclusions on the absence of conservatives, which I sent directly to him as well as publishing it on my blog. I genuinely thought he would respond. The issues are important, and I think my concerns are legitimate.
I have declared that no Canadian conservative (of any ilk) is bothering about multiculturalism and immigration these days. Grace was one of the few. William Gairdner was another, but he stopped his media presence soon after his book The Trouble with Canada came out in the early 1990s.
In fact, I have stated that Grace himself has reneged on that position, preferring to attach himself to a pessimistic, and what I ultimately do call a nihilistic, view that it is self-censorship which is the culprit and that it will have the last word. Here is his definitive quote from his Vdare article last month:
Self-censorship has become a defining Canadian characteristic. Despite Hadjis’s brave decision [KPA: Hadjis was the HRC judge who deemed Section 13 unconstitutional during the Lemire case. But he is not brave, merely opportunistic. Too many scandalous events had occurred during the case, and Hadjis simply had to find a way to dismiss it], it is unlikely we will see a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend any time soon.This is more than pessimistic, this is borderline nihilistic.
So, this is how things progress here. Even the most outspoken and original thinker in the country – yes that is a big honor – capitulates at some point. The only rebuttal to my critique Grace had was to send me an article on “libertarian-extreme,” to show that he had no inclinations towards libertarianism, which was one of my other critiques of him in my blog post. But anyone can find fault with the Madonnas and the Dennis Rodmans, and most of Grace's article was about the extreme (libertarian) behaviors of celebrities.
In a blog post I drafted more than a year ago (July 31, 2008) but never posted, which I titled “Purging the Blogs,” this is what I wrote about Grace:
[Removing my link to] The Ambler:
This was one of the best Canadian blogs around. Kevin Michael Grace would have an array of topics from film reviews to mordant political commentary. I thought he was dead-on with his assessment of the Conrad Black case. But, he had written earlier that he was recovering from an illness. Then it looked like he did recover. Nonetheless, his sparse posts, and his last terribly distressing one, has led me to conclude that he has somehow given up on us, his readers and fellow-citizens. We needed people like him to see through the foggy world of multiculturalism and political correctness.
The Ambler hasn't posted anything since March 2008. If he resumes, and posts on a regular basis, I will reinstall his blog link.I cannot find (or thankfully remember) this "last terribly distressing" post; many of Grace's articles are no longer available at his website. But perhaps my intuition on his mood and mindset was correct after all, even as far back as July 2008.
