Even as the globe gets smaller, geography still shapes national identity.

It’s why England jealously protects the Rock of Gibraltar, Australia hoards the Great Barrier Reef, and China and Japan keep bickering over a cluster of little islands in the China Sea. For a while, Russia even tried to lay claim to Antarctica.

And those are nice prizes for lesser powers. But not for the United States. Because we own the moon.

The Russians made it there first when they managed to crash an orb with an antenna onto the lunar landscape in 1959. We followed up with an unmanned landing of our own the next year, then kept sending up more orbs with more sophisticated equipment. A decade later, Neil Armstrong took his first steps onto the Mare Tranquilitatis.

There Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent 21 hours and 36 minutes taking samples, collecting data, and running scientific experiments. More importantly, they planted the U.S. flag. It was so important that the rest of the world know about our claim that we went back five more times and planted five more flags. They still float there, motionless on a windless rock with one-sixth of the earth’s gravity.

Why did the United States beat the Russians to the moon? Very simple. We got the better German engineers after War War II. More importantly, we are Americans. We had, to borrow a line, the right stuff.

Ours are the only footprints on the moon to this day, and that is why it is refreshing to see Vice President Mike Pence take our space rock seriously. On Thursday, Pence announced plans not just a return trip but “a permanent presence.”

“While our sights are once again set on our lunar neighbor, this time, we’re not content to leave behind only footprints, or even to leave at all,” Pence said. “The time has come for the United States of America to establish a permanent presence around and on the moon.”

Good. Let the other nations occupy themselves with rocks and hills on this world. We own the moon.

