> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.nationalism.io/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.nationalism.io/the-future-of-nation-states/moving-beyond-liberalism.md). # Moving beyond liberalism Liberalism is one of the dominant political ideologies of the modern world. Although there are different forms of liberalism such as classical, social, egalitarian, neoliberal and others, they generally share a number of core commitments. At the heart of liberalism is the belief that individuals possess equal moral worth. From that premise follows the idea that citizens should be treated as equals before the law and should enjoy a basic set of rights and freedoms. Liberal societies typically emphasise freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, private property, legal equality, individual autonomy and government by consent. Liberalism emerged historically as a challenge to older systems based on inherited status, rigid hierarchy, religious conformity and arbitrary power. It sought to create a political order in which individuals were not defined entirely by tribe, class, ethnicity or religion, but were instead recognised as citizens with equal standing. This was one of liberalism’s great achievements. It helped delegitimise caste-like social orders and made possible a universal language of rights and citizenship. In that sense, liberalism has often presented itself not simply as one ideology among others, but as the moral baseline for modern politics. ## **How liberalism advocates for equality** All forms of liberalism advocate, in one way or another, for equal moral worth and equal citizenship. An important premise of liberal ideas is that all citizens are to be treated equally by the state. This does not mean that liberalism assumes all people are identical in talents, character, preferences or life outcomes. Rather, liberalism argues that these differences should not determine whether a person is entitled to basic rights, legal standing or political membership once they are recognised as citizens. In practice, this means liberal societies tend to oppose formal discrimination in law and to emphasise procedural fairness over inherited identity. The ideal is that people participate in public life as equal citizens, even when they differ in religion, background, wealth or culture. That aspiration has been a powerful force for change. But it also created tensions, especially in societies that are not culturally homogeneous, and especially where citizenship, migration and national identity are increasingly being contested. ## **Why liberalism is relevant to civic nationalism** Liberalism is highly relevant to nationalism because one of the most influential modern forms of nationalism, civic nationalism, is deeply shaped by liberal assumptions. Civic nationalism defines the nation primarily in political rather than ancestral terms. On this view, a nation is a community of citizens united by shared laws, institutions, values and commitment to a political order. What matters most is not ancestry, but membership in a common civic project. This idea is attractive in liberal societies because it aligns with several liberal commitments around equal citizenship, legal neutrality between groups, individual rather than inherited status and the possibility of integrating people from different backgrounds into a common political identity. Civic nationalism can therefore be understood as nationalism adapted to a liberal age. It attempts to preserve national solidarity without grounding political membership in ancestry and bloodline. ## **Problems and risks with liberalism** **Too abstract and too thin as a model of society** Liberalism is often criticised for being too abstract and insufficiently rooted in social reality. It begins from the equal moral worth of individuals and tends to organise political life around equal rights, equal citizenship and shared legal status. Yet societies are not made up of interchangeable individuals alone. They are also shaped by the long-established ancestral population and their inherited traditions, collective memories, social norms and distinct ways of life that matter deeply to the people who live within them. By treating many of these differences as politically secondary, liberalism asks communities to accept that preserving their particular character will not be a central priority of the system itself. In that sense, liberalism offers unity through equal treatment, but often without a strong account of how distinct historical communities, identities and inherited cultures are to be maintained over time. This abstraction also helps explain why liberal societies often assume that integration and assimilation are easier than they really are. Liberal states frequently assume that people from very different backgrounds can be incorporated into a common civic culture so long as they are granted rights, access and a pathway to citizenship. Yet integration and assimilation is not automatic and in some cases might not even be possible. People do not necessarily abandon older loyalties, customs or communal attachments simply because they enter a new legal order. Some may wish to preserve their own practices, while others may comply outwardly with civic expectations while remaining socially separate. For that reason, assimilation or even stable integration should never be treated as guaranteed. A liberal society depends not only on formal inclusion, but on whether those who enter it genuinely adopt the norms, obligations and public culture that sustain it. **Risks to social cohesion and economic stability** Liberal societies depend on more than formal rights and legal equality; they also require trust, reciprocity, civic restraint and a willingness to accept common norms. These habits are easier to sustain where people feel they belong to a shared public culture and understand themselves as members of the same political community. When a society becomes more fragmented, citizens may become less likely to see one another as part of a common moral order and more likely to view politics as competition between groups with different interests, values and loyalties. This can weaken solidarity, increase suspicion and make collective sacrifice harder to sustain. Social cohesion does not require complete uniformity, but it does require enough common ground for institutions to command trust and for political disagreement to remain manageable. These social pressures can also have economic consequences. Liberal societies may face material risks if political openness is not matched by strong expectations of contribution, reciprocity and integration. A generous welfare state becomes more vulnerable when some individuals relate to it primarily as a source of benefits rather than as part of a broader system of mutual obligation. If large numbers of people enter a society for material gain without developing loyalty to its institutions or norms, fiscal pressure, public resentment and declining trust can follow. More broadly, prosperous societies often rely on high levels of social trust, work discipline, institutional confidence and long-term orientation. These qualities are not guaranteed merely by extending citizenship or legal equality. Another concern is any group differences that exist around general levels of intelligence or behaviours that influence economic prosperity. Each distinct group has had different levels of success in creating economic prosperity. Liberalism commonly assumes that all groups are equal and capable of creating these societies. This is is a hypothesis and not grounded in existing observable truths. Ignoring these factors could result in an economic system that becomes less productive, less stable and less capable of supporting the political system and social model that liberal societies value. **Political power, self-determination and hidden favouritism** When citizenship is broadly extended and all citizens hold equal political rights, long-established ancestral populations may gradually lose control over the institutions and culture they have historically shaped. In a democracy, changes in demographics can produce changes in electoral power, and changes in electoral power can in turn produce major shifts in law, public priorities and national identity. Liberalism tends to treat this as a normal consequence of equal citizenship, but this can leave historically rooted communities with no reliable assurance that their way of life will endure. A society may begin as a relatively cohesive political community and, over time, become a collection of groups competing to steer the state in different directions. Institutions and laws are meant to protect minorities, but those institutions are themselves shaped by political majorities, which means self-determination is never fully secure under a liberal system. Even where a society continues to speak the language of equality, political systems can still drift toward hidden forms of favouritism. Liberal principles do not automatically prevent majorities from shaping policy in ways that disproportionately benefit their own communities or preferred coalitions. This can happen indirectly through migration rules, welfare design, administrative priorities, educational policy or the selective use of data and public-interest arguments. Governments rarely present such decisions as forms of group preference; they are more likely to frame them as neutral, efficient or humanitarian. Yet in a fragmented society, policy can become a quiet vehicle for resource competition and long-term political advantage beneath the surface of liberal rhetoric. This is especially concerning for smaller or shrinking communities, which may lack the electoral strength needed to resist cumulative changes that weaken their position over time. **No guarantee of continuity** Liberalism offers no guarantee of continuity over the long term. It can organise coexistence for a time, but it cannot ensure that the political, cultural and institutional character of a society will remain stable across generations. Once equal citizenship is extended broadly within a changing society, future outcomes depend on shifting demographics, changing alliances and the preferences of emerging majorities. Liberalism treats this openness to revision as a feature rather than a flaw, but from the perspective of continuity it creates deep uncertainty. A people may adopt liberal principles in the short term without fully considering how those principles could reshape political power, public culture and national identity over time. In that sense, liberalism is often better at legitimising change than preserving inheritance, and better at managing procedural equality than protecting the lasting continuity of historical communities. A simple analogy helps illustrate the point. When an employee becomes the person running a company, the formal structure may remain in place, but priorities, rules and loyalties often change once power changes hands. Sometimes those changes are beneficial; sometimes they are disruptive or even catastrophic. Political communities are no different. A liberal system cannot assume that future majorities will govern according to the same assumptions, priorities or understandings as earlier ones. The long-established ancestral population could be adopting a system that leads to their replacement and that then changes to solidify the dominance of another group that has become a voting power majority. A liberal system assumes that new and emerging majorities will treat shrinking minorities in the same way as historical majorities might have done. **Liberal universalism and the erosion of diversity** Liberalism is often associated with openness, tolerance and diversity. Yet when taken to a strongly universalist extreme, it may actually weaken the world’s real diversity of peoples, cultures and ways of life. If all boundaries are treated as morally suspect, and if all societies are encouraged to converge on the same norms of openness, mobility and equal citizenship, then distinct communities may find it increasingly difficult to preserve their inherited character over time. In the short term, liberalism may appear to increase diversity within states by bringing many communities together. In the long term, however, changes in demographics could erode the continuity of historic cultures by weakening the institutions, boundaries and expectations that help sustain them. A politics that speaks constantly about inclusion may therefore neglect the equally important question of what is being conserved. Differences in ancestry, genetics, heritage and culture are not things that are not as easily protected under a liberal system. The risk of dilution or loss of these distinct ancestral groups along with their heritage and culture is an avoidable outcome if these populations prefer to adopt more conservative solutions like ancestral nationalism. One of the central ironies in the liberal understanding is around the topic of diversity. Liberalism often celebrates diversity within the state, but can be less capable of preserving diversity between distinct historical communities over time. If every society is encouraged to dissolve strong boundaries and treat continuity as morally secondary, then the result may not be a flourishing mosaic of distinct peoples, but a gradual flattening of difference under a universal political model. The question, then, is not whether openness has value, but whether openness without limits can preserve the very forms of cultural and historical distinctiveness that make genuine diversity meaningful in the first place. ## **Moving beyond liberalism** Moving beyond liberalism does not mean rejecting every liberal principle. It does not require abandoning the rule of law, basic rights or equal human dignity. But it does mean recognising that liberalism is incomplete. A post-liberal perspective would begin with understanding: * People are socially embedded, not just autonomous individuals * Political communities are historical and cultural realities, not only legal constructs * Shared norms, trust and continuity matter * Borders and membership are morally significant * Society cannot survive indefinitely if it cannot decide who belongs and what must be preserved So the task is not to destroy everything that is related to liberalism but to instead identify what each distinct ancestral group wants to preserve. If they want to preserve their own continuity as a distinct group with a distinct culture they are entitled to do so. ## **Self-determination for distinct communities** Liberalism commonly struggles to account for the depth of human difference and the importance of ancestral and cultural continuity. It also has difficulty addressing the challenges of large-scale integration and the long-term political consequences of demographic and civic transformation. It is strongest at defending fairness within a settled community, but much weaker at explaining how that community remains settled in the first place. For societies that care about continuity, cohesion and genuine pluralism between distinct peoples and traditions, liberalism may not be enough. They may need a politics that incorporates ancestry, history, culture, borders, civic trust and self-government more seriously. One principle that follows from this critique is self-determination. Self-determination is the principle that a people, nation or distinct political community should have the authority to govern themselves and decide on their own political future without being controlled by an outside power or by another group that does not share its interests. Communities benefit from self-government because it allows them to protect the continuity of their ancestry, genetics, heritage and culture. This helps with the preservation of their institutions, public culture, inherited traditions and long-term collective interests. It also allows them to retain more meaningful control over education, migration, public norms and institutional inheritance. Without this, distinct communities may become increasingly dependent on the goodwill of larger or changing majorities. If such communities want to recover greater control over their future, they need legitimate political mechanisms through which that preference can be expressed. In practice, this could include referendums, devolved government, federal restructuring, autonomy arrangements or other constitutional reforms that allow distinct communities to govern themselves more directly. From a post-liberal perspective, self-determination is not about rejecting human dignity or basic rights. It is about ensuring that distinct communities have a durable capacity to preserve themselves, govern themselves and shape their own future.