ABSTRACT
Some liberals have argued that as part of its nation-building goals, the liberal state may rightly regulate immigration. Liberalism is commonly regarded as an individualist political morality in that it takes the individual to be the ultimate unit of moral worth and concern, and that she is entitled to equal respect and concern. It is in this sense that liberalism can be said to be fundamentally a cosmopolitan political morality. Traditionally, it has been thought that liberalism and nationalism are antithetical ideals; and to the extent that liberal democracy and liberal egalitarianism must presuppose an underlying national community, liberalism is doomed to failure in the eyes of its critics. Liberal nation-building is unavoidably biased in a sense: it aims to engender and promote a given national culture for the benefit of its adherents. It helps secure for members of a nation access to that nation's cultural resources, without doing the same for non-nationals outside its borders.
