If you are talking about national identity bereft of and independent from race or ethnicity then you are close to what I want and are maybe using the word nationalism differently from what I meant. Except I go one step above and believe in taking this to a supra national level. You clearly see benefits in dissolving ethnic/racial identification in service of a larger group viz a nation, I just believe in taking it a step further. It has nothing to do with the number of governments one wants or wanting a world government. I don't feel a need to be governed by Germany or France while at the same time I feel no problem in my money and my support going to them and in feeling kinship with them over common principles.
I think it's important to draw the distinction specifically between multiculturalism (the idea of allowing the nation to be just an economic zone containing multiple cultures), and nationalism (the idea that the citizens of a nation should have a shared culture and identity).
And promotion of that shared identity is absolutely vital; it should be independent of race, but not ethnicity, since typically I understand ethnicity to include cultural identity.
It's not so much about what we do voluntarily; Its about how we construct an argument that taxation and policing is ethical.
I think ethnicity is also not a good fit if thats what you are intending it to mean.
But actual ethnicities and races will in any case emerge in any society over the centuries. And we will need another set of wars and bloodshed to relearn the lessons of ethnic/racialism being bad again.
That's where I differ. I see absolutely no point in ethnic identity and what benefits it gives us (over its negatives). If you tell me there is a plot of land available and I get enough people to agree I'd gladly jump in with peoples of liberal capitalistic democratic mindset with absolutely zero shits given about race or ethnicity or language to form a new country. We will set a common language but its simply a matter of common standards, not some emotional or historical appeal to thousands of years ago. I'd explicitly make it clear in the founding documents we are not founded on any race or ethnicity or religion.
