The Chris Moeller Archives

This Land is Our Land

The Fourth of July always brings to my mind the travels of youth-- motor trips spanning across this immense country, through each of the 48 contingent states, up to and even beyond our political borders. Ours is a land of extraordinarily diverse topography and culture, and of people raised and inspired by the most breathtaking of ideals. Our shared history remains stubbornly animated in these thousands of varied locales; and by traveling to them, we're constantly and vividly reminded that the history is still alive. The issues that define and divide us today-- from immigration to religious and social freedom to the waging of peace-- are the issues that always have.

Some of the most memorable moments of my life have been the moments when I've found myself standing in a spot of great historical significance in regards to these lofty ambitions. I felt myself powerfully moved, not just by the sweeping grandeur of time, but by our connection today to that long ago time and place. As a people, we've experienced both thunderous progress and profound loss, sometimes simultaneously.

To mark the holiday, I wanted to single out a handful of places in the United States where I've experienced the swell of patriotism-- places that helped to make me the damnable idealist that I am today:


1) Little Bighorn National Monument, Crow Agency, Montana:

The site where General George Custer and the 7th Cavalry met their fate in 1876 at the hands of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors stands as monument to United States military folly, the national shame of our repeated attempts to colonize the globe and, under guise of spreading democracy and civility, lay claim to its natural resources. Burial markers still dot the landscape at the Little Bighorn. As the breeze rustles the high prairie grass, allow plenty of time to recall the extended history of American imperialism.


2) Ellis Island Immigration Museum, New York City:

My German ancestors came through Castle Garden in New York's Battery Park in the 1860s, but twelve million more of us passed through the subsequent port of New York harbor, Ellis Island, as immigrants between 1892 and 1954, arriving from countries such as Ireland, Russia, and Italy. Let us never forget that too many were turned away as well-- often as victimized "alien radicals" during the "Red Scare," or because of such heinous restriction laws as the Chinese Exclusion Act, the National Origins Act (an ethnic quota system), or by the sinister use of literacy tests. If you're in the Big Apple, hop on the boat to Ellis Island and take the self-guided audio tour. The sounds and stories haunt and inspire.


3) The French Quarter (Vieux Carre), New Orleans, Louisiana:

Simply put, this is America's greatest urban history center and our greatest monument to the cherished legacy of race-mixing in the Land of the Free. Slave and free Africans, French Creoles, Spanish, Haitian, Italian and German immigrants each exacted an extraordinary influence on New Orleans' central cultural district, and America's greatest gift to the world (aside from the Constitution), jazz music, was born in nearby Storyville in 1900. Screw Vegas, and make New Orleans' French Quarter your next exotic and carnal travel destination.


4) Glacier National Park, West Glacier, Montana:

Infrastructural neglect by the U.S. Federal Government put the French Quarter at peril before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005, but time will likely run out first for Glacier National Park along the Alberta and British Columbia borders of northwest Montana. Thanks to greenhouse-like warming of the planet, scientists expect that the remaining 27 glaciers in the park will have melted away by 2030. The vast expanse of the park and the natural beauty of jagged, majestic mountains and swooping valleys reminds us how fortunate we are to live in paradise on Earth, and it affirms our core values of both natural conservation and public ownership.


And 5) the tomb of Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois:

America's greatest president is entombed beneath granite and steel, along with his wife and children, at his hometown in central Illinois. The city of Springfield has lots of Lincoln sites to offer, such as the Presidential Library, museum, and tours of Honest Abe's home and law office, but for me, the solemnity of his final resting place at Oak Ridge Cemetery allowed for the most sobering reflection upon the life of an extraordinary leader-- the man who, in the face of vicious and violent political opposition and the widespread corruption of wealth, emancipated us all.

posted by CM @ 11:22 AM