Lament for a Nation

Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism is a 1965 essay of political philosophy by Canadian philosopher George Grant. The essay examined the political fate of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservative government in light of its refusal to allow nuclear arms on Canadian soil and the Liberal Party's political acceptance of the warheads. The book became a bestseller and "inspired a surge of nationalist feeling" in Canada,^: 271 evident in its recognition as one of The Literary Review of Canada's 100 most important Canadian books in 2005.

Although grounded in the particular examination of Diefenbaker's fate in the 1963 federal election, the analysis transcended Canadian politics, studying Canadian and US national foundations, Conservatism in the UK and North America, Canada's dual nature as a French and English nation, the fate of Western Enlightenment, and the philosophical analysis of citizenship in modern democracies.