Do you think that leaving an outrage like that to go unpunished, or failing to reform the guilty as they deserve, will allow you to leave your homeland 'flourishing'? Flowers like that won't produce fruit, but thorns! Compare the choices: would you prefer your hometown to flower with piety or with licence, with reformed characters, or with atrocities unchecked? Compare the choices, and see whether your love for your home-town surpasses ours, and whether you, or we, are more fully and genuinely eager for it to flourish.

augustine, letter 91 to nectarius (408/9 aD), p.3

chesterton says you have to love the city enough to burn it down. turns out he got it from augustine.