At the risk of sounding anti-Walmart…oh who the hell am I kidding. I am anti-Walmart. But this should burn the britches of even the most ardent Walmart supporter and/or shopper.
It seems there aren’t enough Walmarts in the world already. It seems Goliath wants to build himself another hideous grey castle. His sights have recently been set on a nice little spot in Virginia right next to the Wilderness/Chancellorsville battlefield. For those of you unfamiliar with Civil War history, two separate battles were fought on this spot a year apart from each other; Chancellorsville in May of 1863 (you may remember that I blogged a little about this a few weeks ago) and The Wilderness in May of 1864. Both of these battles were bloody and brutal, with the latter battle marking the start of General Ulysses Grant’s year-long campaign to destroy General Lee’s army. Tens of thousands of Americans fell here. It is hallowed ground, a rare and precious thing here in America, as opposed to Walmarts. As a friend of mine put it: “Wal-Mart doesn’t need to expand. And I’m a shareholder.”
The Civil War Preservation Trust has been fighting for years to preserve important sites like The Wilderness, with varying success, and they’re fighting like mad to preserve this one. They’re asking for our help…for your help…and I think we should give it to them.
So take a few minutes and check out their website for lots more information about the battles, why it’s important to preserve our battlefields, and what YOU can do to support them. Robert Mackey of the Huffington Post said it better that I ever could:
“Support the saving of our heritage, so that decades from now, when a Wal Mart SuperCenter is finished sucking the resources and life from a small community and has moved on to another victim, we will still have a quiet piece of land where we can bring our children and remember what the cost of freedom truly means.”
R.J. Keller 
Oh my God, I HATE walmart. Seriously. You know I’m all for the American dream, and building a business, and giving people things for lower prices, BUT, the cost of things like Walmart are too high from a socio-economic perspective and we would do wise to shop elsewhere when we can.
And yes, sometimes I DO still shop at walmart. I’m locked in to that, as its the cheapest place sometimes and sometimes money is tight.
What is happening to the Fredericksburg area is appalling. They are actually moving monuments to accomodate the sprawl. And no they don’t need another store of any type in that area..they have destroyed so much already. It is time the State steps in and starts to protect this land. Yes I know some is private, and owner property rights ..blah blah blah…but if it isn’t done now, there will be nothing left. Virginia is destroying itself.. and it truly sickens me.
And my big question…where is all this money coming from? Houses, malls, schools, etc. Here and like your area it blight we are fighting, and lack of jobs, roads and bridges that are crumbling, aging school buildings, increased taxes…. so on and so forth. I am still waiting for that $60k a year job…
Ok I’m done…..
AJ–thanks for posting my short essay from HuffPo. I hope the word gets out to more people.
There are lots of places to build Wal Marts. In general, I find them abhorrant (and I grew up in Arkansas and in the Ozarks…and witnessed first hand how they demolished small town businesses), but if they want to build more marts, they can go right ahead.
But not on a battlefield, cemetary, or other part of our collective history. Once it is gone, it is gone forever.
Bob
Thank you for dropping by here, and for writing the article. More people need to be made aware of these threats to our history.