Cold Snap

As part of the weekend Globe and Mail's Iggypalooza, Michael Valpy speaks with the Prime-Minister-in waiting.

Money quote, at least for me:

...he [George Grant, Canadian philosopher and Ignatieff's uncle] thought capitalism is godless, materialistic and morally relativist. It's not my problem. It never was my problem. I don't mean to dismiss that lightly. But this is where we had substantial arguments when I was young and he was older and wiser.

I like market society because I like its freedoms, and freedom is a very chilly thing. It doesn't give you a metaphysics. It doesn't give you a community. But it gives you freedom. And then you have to decide which of these values in life you want.

He longed, I think, for community. Community mattered maybe more to him than freedom. Freedom matters more to me than anything else.

Pardon me if I find this view unimpressive, unpersuasive, and uninformed to boot.