This post is semi-spiel.  My thoughts are that we all live for a higher purpose.  We ought to work for this, beyond the here-and-now, beyond the concrete realities of everyday life.  When we fight for our country, we ought to do so not because the geographical area or even the name is something which requires our every effort.  Rather, it's because of the ideals it promotes, the freedoms it protects – the very things which allows us to pursue our “higher purpose”.  So it's really the ideals which the American Founders set forth which provides a basis for what we really want to protect.  If our country were ever to far and away abandon its principles, we ought not continue the fight for it.  The ideals of the founding would still exist, and those we can pursue.  This is what our Founders did, is it not?  They began from the beginning when that which was not working became too much for them to bear, something which diverted from the ideals and the freedoms they sought to protect and promote.