Undiminished.............................

All that patriotism requires, and all that it can be,
is eagerness to maintain intact and incorrupt
the founding principles of the nation, and to preserve
undiminished the land and the people.  If national conduct
forsakes these aims, it is one's patriotic duty
to say so and to oppose.  What else have we to live for?

-Wendell Berry
Sabbaths  VIII
2003