"The belief that America stands for an idea beyond blood and soil makes its identity fragile, because an idea lives in people’s minds, where it is subject to lies, hatred, ignorance, despair, even extinction. But for this very reason, as long as enough Americans continue to believe in the idea with enough conviction to stick it out here and fight, the country that you and I once lived in will still exist for the generation after us."

The belief that a country should exist purely for nostalgic purposes is the kind of bullshit that got us here in the first place. Countries started existing so that a monach could control resources and worker productivity. Now they are used as a default identity for people to try and connect on some level. If you don't treat the identity as fragile, sure it can never 'die', but it can't improve or change either.