Because nationalism is linked with war and persecution, it is easy to treat it as simply bad. Yet many thoughtful people, including committed democrats and liberals, defend some form of national loyalty. This level presents their case as they would make it.

Self-government

The first argument concerns freedom. For colonized and conquered peoples, nationalism framed independence as freedom from foreign rule. A people governed by outsiders, however efficient, is not self-governing. National movements in Ireland, India, Ghana and many other places demanded that people be ruled by their own representatives, and the right of peoples to self-determination is now written into international law.

A related argument concerns how democracy works. In 1861 the philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote that “free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities.” Mill argued that free institutions are very hard to sustain among different nationalities, because citizens need shared sympathies, a common public debate and trust in one another to govern themselves. Mill's essay also contained condescending views of smaller peoples, which few would defend today, but his central worry still shapes debates about democracy in divided societies.

Solidarity and trust

Modern states ask a great deal of their citizens: to pay taxes that help strangers, to accept defeat in elections, to serve in emergencies. Defenders argue that a shared identity builds the trust needed for sacrifices among strangers. People are more willing to fund schools and health care for others if they see those others as part of “us”. The British philosopher David Miller, in On Nationality (1995), argued, in paraphrase, that national identity is a legitimate part of who people are, that nations are ethical communities whose members owe each other special duties, and that ambitious schemes of social justice depend on the solidarity nationhood provides.

Culture and belonging

A third argument concerns culture. Herder held that each people's language and traditions express a distinct way of being human, worth preserving. The Israeli political theorist Yael Tamir, in Liberal Nationalism (1993), argued, in paraphrase, that people have an interest in living within and expressing their culture, and that this interest deserves political recognition. Importantly, she held that national membership can be reflected on and chosen, that a nation's legitimate claim is to a public sphere where its culture can flourish, not necessarily to a state of its own, and that this claim must be balanced against individual rights.

Nationalism and humanity

Some nationalists saw no conflict between love of nation and love of humanity. The Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini taught that love of nation could be a step toward serving humanity: nations were like workshops in which each people could contribute its gifts to the common good of all, and he supported the national freedom of other peoples as well as his own.

Liberal nationalism

These ideas come together in liberal nationalism, the view that national identity is valuable and can be combined with liberal democracy, provided it respects individual and minority rights and claims no superiority over other nations. Liberal nationalists usually support welcoming newcomers who join the national community, protecting minority cultures, and cooperating internationally. They see themselves as offering a healthy alternative both to aggressive ethnic nationalism and to a cosmopolitanism they regard as too abstract to inspire loyalty.

Critics, explored in the next levels, doubt that nationalism can be kept within these limits, especially in times of fear or crisis. But the liberal nationalist case is a serious one, and it explains why national loyalty remains attractive to many people who reject chauvinism.

Worked example: keeping a language alive in Wales

Wales offers a good example of the liberal nationalist idea that a culture can be given public space without a separate state.

By the twentieth century, Welsh had been in decline for generations. Census figures showed the share of Welsh speakers falling steadily, and many older people remembered being punished at school for speaking it. Campaigners argued that a language with no place in public life, broadcasting or education would not survive.

Over several decades, Wales built that public place. Welsh-medium schools grew, often at the request of parents who did not speak Welsh themselves. After a prominent campaign, including a threatened hunger strike by the Welsh nationalist leader Gwynfor Evans, a Welsh-language television channel, S4C, was launched in 1982. Laws in 1993 and 2011 gave Welsh official status in Wales and placed duties on public bodies to provide services in it. The decline slowed, though the 2021 census found that fewer than one in five residents of Wales could speak Welsh.

A liberal nationalist like Tamir would see this as her model at work: a national culture secured through democratic means, within a larger multinational state, with no one forced to speak the language. Miller would add that shared Welsh institutions strengthen the solidarity of Welsh people.

Critics raise fair questions too. Language requirements for some public jobs can disadvantage the majority who do not speak Welsh; the policies cost money; and some ask whether the state should promote any particular culture at all. The case shows liberal nationalism's appeal and the trade-offs it involves.