Opinion: The ideas and places that make America

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After a week of enjoying Colorado’s sunshine, and tolerating its intense dry heat, it’s good to be back in the cool, moist air of our temperate rainforest. It’s home and has been for 34 years.

But I wonder if that’s long enough to be considered a real Alaskan.

The question has been on my mind ever since I read the speech J.D. Vance gave when accepting his party’s nomination for vice president. He argued that America is more than an idea established by the brilliance of our Constitution. “It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.”

History, however, isn’t that simple. Americans still dispute the significance of the Civil War and the one we fought in Vietnam. Tragically, we can’t even agree on the results of the last presidential election.

And there’s a lot of disagreement on the path the country should follow into the future.

Vance emphasized two personal stories to make his point. He talked about growing up in Middletown, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati “where people spoke their minds, built with their hands, and loved their God, their family, their community and their country with their whole hearts.”

But like most steel mill towns, it “had been cast aside and forgotten by America’s ruling class in Washington.” Illegal drug addiction was a problem in his youth and is now. More specifically, he referred to the negative impacts of the North American Free Trade Agreement and trade deals with China.

For the record, blaming President Joe Biden for the problems those created was a partisan rewrite of history. It’s true he supported both, but he was joined by far more Republicans than Democrats.

The other place Vance tied to his definition of a nation is a sparsely populated county in Eastern Kentucky that’s “one of the 10 poorest” in America. But the “very hardworking people” who live there “love this country, not only because it’s a good idea, but because in their bones they know that this is their home, and it will be their children’s home, and they would die fighting to protect it.”

And someday in the distant future, he hopes to be “laid to rest” in a nearby cemetery where five generations of his family “who have fought for this country” are buried.

While Vance is very much connected to his Appalachian roots, aside from the fact my father fought in World War II, his idea of a homeland would leave me homeless.

Dad was born in Wisconsin to an unwed mother and never even knew his father’s name. Mom was the daughter of Sicilian immigrants who settled in Boston. They raised a family of seven in a suburb 25 miles north of there.

I left after graduating from college and during the next six years lived in four cities in three different states. Three and half of those were spent in Ketchikan.

I arrived in Juneau in 1990, the same year my youngest sister Christine graduated from high school and left to attend college in Boulder, Colorado. My parents moved to a southwestern Denver suburb to be closer to her and my other sisters. They chose to be buried less than ten miles from their new home of 25 years.

For us and countless others, the idea of America freedom has always been a wide open invitation to explore this great land. To settle wherever we choose to raise our children. For them to find their own path. And as my parents did, to move again to watch their grandchildren grow.

When I came back to Southeast Alaska in 1990, I was struck by the unexpected sensation of coming home. It hasn’t changed in 34 years. Christine understands. “You can never leave here” she told me when visited last summer.

“Home is where the heart is,” as the old saying goes. I may not have been blessed with an Alaskan heritage, but just like anyone who came from outside and stayed, it’s loving wherever in this great land we chose to live that makes us Alaskans.

And in every state, there’s a collection of such places populated by lifelong residents and relative newcomers who are all real Americans.

• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector. Columns, My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire. Have something to say? Here’s how to submit a My Turn or letter.

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Opinion: The ideas and places that make America

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