In this article, I claim that, while placing his theory of language, language planning, and standardization within a conceptual and historical framework inspired by Modernity, the emergence of the nation-state and liberal democracy, Haugen carefully mapped sociolinguistic phenomena onto their political treatment. And it was this careful and honest cartography--unafraid of generating internal tensions--that revealed aspects of language planning practice and scholarship in need of a critical treatment. Ultimately, Haugen embraced an understanding of linguistics that revolves around normativity and accepts language's fundamentally political nature.