Beyond the Nation State.

This article examines the concept of the nation state. Liberal nationalism is also nationalism. Its goal is a unified nation state. However, the means at its disposal do not include persecuting the use of minority languages, prohibiting minority culture, expelling members of the minority from their domiciles or destroying them. The meeting of liberalism and nationalism promised a happy union. The liberal doctrine seemed capable of reconciling nationalism's democratic and egalitarian impulses with its discriminatory policy with respect to minorities. The distinction between nation and nationalities was only one of a number of dimensions in which liberalism tried to harmonize equality before the state with individual freedom.