Nationalism is a way for people to seek their own freedom and liberate themselves from those preventing the expression of their beliefs so that they can live surrounded by their own culture. However, people in some areas of the world can take the drive for nationalism beyond means of peace and into violence, be it because of a long struggle or the sheer need to have it. Nationalism can bring out the ugly in people, as it has in the past and will continue to do so in the future, and its results are devastating. .
The article Bullets and Borders gives us such an example over in the village of Pervomayskoye, where the Chechen separatists, who had taken innocent hostages, were beaten to a pulp by the Russian army. The Chechen were ready to take the lives of others or give their own for their own country, and the latter is how it turned out. Now, they do have a right to seek their own country; land on our planet is being broken down into smaller and smaller nationalized states. However, it has become a deadly addiction for everyone who wants it, and it is turning into nothing but bloody chaos.
For me, I don't even feel a need to read the article to explain if national identity is real or imagined. To the soul it is real, but under technicalities it is imagined. I can take this both ways. Think about it! All these new countries that are being created are basically imagined. There is no massive force field dividing the countries, and no one takes a black marker or a pair of scissors to divide them off or cut them from the rest of the land. They're still connected to the same area, and still neighbouring the same people. To me, however, it is very real. National identity is a very fragile item; more so breakable than the most delicate of glass. Simple things like priority of language on a road sign can be the difference between confidence and discrimination. Humans need to be loved in order to live successfully, and to be loved is to have a background, a history, a culture.