Some Issues On Liberal Nationalism

Traditional nationalism theory is mainly concerned with the construction of thenation-state.However,with the continuous development of the nationalism, the theoryof nationalism is also undergoing tremendous changes. Nationalism is not alwayslinked with violence, political conflict.To a large extent, nationalism has beenmisunderstood. Therefore, a better understanding of nationalism will be morebeneficial to the development of the theory and the practical political solution to theproblem.As a new kind of nationalism theory, liberal nationalism attempts to combinethese two seemingly contradictory ideas of liberalism and nationalism, to reinterpretthe meaning and significance of nationalism.Nationalism offers political legitimacyfor traditional countries.However,in today's world,nationalism still meets thechallenges to identity consciousness from both super-nations and sub-nations,such asthe establishment of the European Union. This will have a significant impact on thedevelopment of nationalism under the context of multi-ethnic country,and liberallationalism tries to argue for nationalism using the method of liberalism.Obviously, liberal nationalism its insights, on the one hand, it is different from theconservative nationalism ideology, but an open, moderate nationalism theory. On theother hand, liberal nationalism have its own theoretical framework, rather than justdistinguishing the concept of non-liberal nationalism.In this paper,the aim is todiscuss the main problems of the theory of liberal nationalism and attempts to make asystematic exposition.The second part examines the theoretical origins of nationalism, discusses two main theoretical paradigm of nationalism and analyses their influence on liberalnationalism.What's more,it also discusses the origin and development of liberalnationalism both from historical and theoretical aspects. The third part is to discussthe main content of the theory of liberal nationalism, including its concept aboutnations, views on the national identity, and further analysis of the main principles ofthe theory of liberal nationalism that is the characteristics of the theory.The fourth partexamines a more central issue on liberal nationalism, namely, the theory views oncultural values.It analyses the theoretical value and attempts to grasp the culturalvalues of the liberal nationalism by investigating some cases about the theory,as wellas its defects. The last part of the article is a summary of the theory of liberalnationalism in the contemporary vision,and its possible benefits to China's nationalaffairs.