Are We Living For An Uncertain Future?

"Hallowed Ground" is one of my favorite Erasure songs. Hell, it's arguably the best song on their 1988 classic, The Innocents. When I hear it, I'm 19 again and racing the autumn leaves down Route 202. There wasn't a care in the world along the Delaware River. There was only time, and lots of it. Smoke if ya got 'em.

An older, more jaded me hears a plodding wisdom in the song, a weltschmerz that didn't register back then. Similarly, I knew I'd been standing on actual hallowed ground, but only in a vague sense. I knew the basics, but had no appreciation for the players, their reasons, and the miraculous forces at work all throughout.

This past year, I took an impromptu tour of Revolutionary War sites. I wanted to stand in the places I'd mostly just read about, and genuinely connect with those I'd previously been to. There were men and women, sometimes even boys and girls, who'd exhibited preternatural courage and resolve at every turn. Their blood was in the soil. Every last natural right I've ever enjoyed was affirmed in that dirt. Upon returning home from each location, I'd carefully scrape the mud from my boots into a small glass jar. I have ten or so now, and they are more precious to me than gold.

I stood with Gen. Joseph Warren atop Bunker Hill. Out of deference to commanding officer Gen. Israel Putnam, he offered to serve as a Private. Who does that?? He held his ground, even when he was out of ammunition, giving the militia time to escape. He was then shot in the face by a British officer, stripped, his body bayoneted until unrecognizable and tossed into a hollow ditch.

I walked the same streets as Agent 355, the woman whose clandestine service helped win the war. I stood beside John Glover and his Marbleheaders on both sides of the icy Delaware. I walked the rolling expanse of Chadd's Ford, searching for the spot where Maj. Patrick Ferguson had conducted himself so chivalrously. In a fitting bookend, I stood where he fell at the battle of Kings Mountain.

I huddled beside a tiny fire with some anonymous kid at Valley Forge. He spit into the embers and smiled. His clothes were in tatters, his boots consisting of nothing more than bloody rags knotted around his feet. "We'll eat tomorrow, they tell us," he chimed. There were a thousand others just like him - can you hear them calling?

I discovered that Liberty was sown in the North and ultimately reaped in the South. I learned that black men fought shoulder-to-shoulder with white men, with equal gallantry and sacrifice. I felt the soil in my hands from Concord to Cowpens, and in doing so held sinew and soul.

They were not statues or paintings, they were real, live people (you can see actual photographs of them here). Not yellow or brown, not gay or straight or Christian or atheist - just AMERICAN. They were just like me and you: outnumbered, brave, and equal parts determined and unsure. They were willing to fight and die for the belief that God, the universe, Mother Nature, biology, evolution or sheer happenstance had created them with abilities that no man could ever take away. Let's not be the generation that gives them away.

In closing, I believe as Warren did: The future is not uncertain, for it's the same Providence then, now and always. Do you have to visit these sites to gain a similar appreciation? The parks and rangers would certainly appreciate it, but no. In a Republic, wherever We The People stand is hallowed ground.

Going forward, I want to devote a section of each entry to states, organizations and Citizens who are actively defending the Constitution. The state-run media may not report it, but The Third Lantern shines brightly on Idaho today!