Don't even get ME started on WALMART !!! The only thing that they want from you is YOUR SOUL !!!

Don't do it! By the time I can afford to make my Tour of American History vacation, everything is going to be gone!

It's pretty fucking bad, but is it... Indian burial ground bad?

I live in Richmond VA. That building will not be built there, I promise you that. If the people scream that they don't want it (and they will)I won't be built...Welcome to VA

The Honorable Al Franken will be declared the winner of the election for the Senate in Minnesota. This was worth waiting for.

See >story at Reuters.

SoS Ritchie expects the election to be certified tomorrow midafternoon.

Congratulations, Senator Franken.

You know that the Civil War was fought to create the 14th Amendment which gives corporations like Wal-Mart the same rights of a human beings. It would be fitting to have one the largest corporations in American build a memorial superstore to honor their rights that 500,000 poor American pig farmers died to give them. God Bless America.

Joe your biting social commentary is seriously damaging my mellow. So knock it off, would you?

(j/k... le sigh. The internets need a better way to convey tone.)

Aren't you suppose to write El Sarcasmo?

OK... weirdness alert - why is my entire post showing a link to the reuters article?

QT

>>>Aren't you suppose to write El Sarcasmo?

Man that El Mystico jerk is complete fucktard. Can't even remember to type "oh right" in his post to set up the transition. God. Dammit. Also Joe shut up.

I'm a historian, and don't particularly care for Wal-Mart, but perhaps you could spring for a "why" in your argument against the positioning of this store.

I should qualify a few things here, I'm not one who generally thinks of every single piece of land that was adjacent to a Civil War battle (or even at its center) as necessarily constituting "hallowed ground." In a war that saw hundreds of thousands die, that death was obviously spread out a bit. Hell, just on my morning walks with the dog I pass two historic markers for men who died defending the District from invasion (both are next to commercial sites, btw). I'm not saying I'm indifferent or even opposed, but I'm not going to piss my pants, scream and holler, or generally start bitching to someone with power/authority simply because it involves Wal-Mart and/or a Civil War site.

If the area already has a billion box stores, why the sudden opposition? If the planned Wal-Mart is to be placed "so close" to a historic site, explain why this would be necessarily detrimental. As it is, it just seems like you're a Wal-Mart hater or Civil War chauvinist. There's nothing terribly wrong with either group of folks, but I generally try to ignore 99% of what comes out of the moths of both.

Tone is a hard thing to type. I am working on that problem myself. Can you tell I am so happy that I am crying right now? No? I'll work on it.

Anyway, if corporations have the same rights as human beings, which is the right to live, doesn't that mean that true capitalism died in the 1860s?

The first lobbying of the House of Lords(Congress) was done to attach corporations to the 14th amendment which was probably the most costly(body count) amendment in our Constitution.

I am sickened by whatever type of market system we have in this country. I call it, GO FUCK YOURSELF PEASANTS!!

KLAN,

I don't think Bob is a WalMart hater or a Civil War partisan. If the store was a Hemp Shop I am sure Bob would have the same opinion. This particle chunk of earth is historic because of Grant/Lee and that is why it is Hollowed Ground.

Clancy I think it demonstrates the absolute necessity to preserve some of these more important sites. I can see your argument, which is really 'history happens everywhere' and we can't preserve them all, but America seems to already lack any institutional memory. Paving over and Wal-Marting every patch of land that might be of enormous historical importance really contributes to that.

Shouldn't we be able to say "We're the richest, most powerful country in the world (yeah, yeah, I know. Almost completely wrong on both counts, but we love to shout it at the rest of the world). So rich, in fact, we can afford to spare a few pieces of land from economic development in order to preserve our history."

I know I am chiming in here late, but it occurs to me that the point really is that we are becoming nothing more than a nation of routes and small highways that go speeding by huge chunks of paved parking lots with Big Box stores.

I think that this falls much more under the category of reinvesting in rebuilding small town centers back to their glory days where people could stop and window shop. I guess THIS is what is important for me about this.

Joe, if that were the case, then perhaps Bob and every one else should have said boo back when the other box stores were erected in the exact same place. Why is it that these sites in Virginia suddenly become hallowed when Wal-Mart or Disney are eying them, but a waste of space when it's Best Buy, BB&B, or a 28-screen cineplex? Oh, and Grant and Lee can suck it. Any land in relation to those two only became hallowed after they ordered men to their deaths fighting over it. It's death for a cause that consecrates, not the fact that two famous guys ordered them to kill each other.

Nano, I was under the impression that the site was only near the battlefield, not on it. Part of this is some weird aesthetic b.s. Not only must we supposedly preserve "hallowed ground," we wouldn't want tourists to have bad views while they visit and spend money at the privately-contracted visitor's center.

If the land adjacent to the historic site was considered so valuable/important, then perhaps it should also be incorporated within the site. In reality, there's only so much we can "preserve." In Virginia, there are groups that complained when a housing development was placed in the valley five miles from Monticello because it "ruined the view" and "marred the historical character of the site." It didn't help that the houses were ugly, but still, there has to be some logical ends to these kinds of arguments.