THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 9, 1994 TAG: 9406090003
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A15 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Pat Buchanan
DATELINE: 940609 LENGTH: WASHINGTON
To Ikle, this belief in a Utopia of Perpetual Growth is heresy, its cheerleaders not conservatives at all, but Jacobins, blind to the unintended consequence of their addiction to growth, who are risking all we would conserve, and driving away our natural allies.
{REST} ``Alas, the growth utopians,'' he writes, ``attack those who are favorably disposed toward conservatism, the very people who know, as Edmund Burke put it, `that they should not think it among their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on our inheritance.' Everywhere, and all the time, our Jacobins of growth ridicule those who wish to conserve forests, seashores or wildlife.'' And, today, one might add: The historic and hallowed ground of the republic.
What brings Ikle's piece to mind is the battle over Walt Disney Co.'s plans to erect a 3,000-acre edge city and theme park, five miles from Manassas battlefield, where Stonewall Jackson made his stand.
Historian C. Vann Woodward describes the area Disney would exploit: ``Wedged between the Potomac and the Blue Ridge Mountains and running up to Harper's Ferry, this part of Northern Virginia has soaked up more of the blood, sweat and tears of American history than any other area of the country. It has bred more founding fathers, inspired more soaring hopes and ideals and witnessed more triumphs and failures, victories and lost causes than any other place in the country. If such a past can render a soil `sacred,' this sliver is the perfect venue. And it is precisely upon this sliver that Disney and its Hollywood investors propose to release their hordes of commercial developers.''
What will Disney's development do to this ``sacred sliver''?
Writes Pat Ferguson, historian of Chancellorsville, ``it will dump a haphazard metropolitan area onto the northern Piedmont, for more than 200 years some of the most lovingly preserved historic countryside in the nation. Brandy Station, Bull Run, Cedar Mountain, Kelly's Ford, Leesburg, Manassas, Middleburg, Oatlands, Warrenton, Waterford, the Wilderness, dozens of places with names familiar for their history and their beauty will be affected.''
Yet, when writers and historians spoke up to save this scenic slice of Virginia's beauty and America's history, they were hooted down, mocked, and ridiculed - by conservatives.
Why? In a word: Money. Disney claims its theme park will dump $47 million yearly into state tax coffers, and create 19,000 jobs. These sugar plums dancing in their heads, legislators voted $163 million for roads and ramps to the Disney park.
But in handing over Virginia's heartland, these politicians are selling her soul. To put a theme park here is like putting one above Omaha Beach.
Conservatives who worship at the altar of an endlessly rising GNP should tell us: What is it they any longer wish to conserve, if not the ground where the founding fathers lived, and where Union and Confederate armies clashed for four years to decide whether we would remain one country?
Once the park is built, argues the National Trust for Historic Preservation, it will ``be followed . . . by a sprawling collection of strip malls, motels, pizza parlors, fast-food emporiums, T-shirt stores, souvenir stands, service stations, miniature golf courses and . . . other commercial enterprises that would cheapen the countryside.'' That happened at both Disney parks in Anaheim and Orlando.
When Virginians protested they did not want an Orlando here, Disney Chairman Michael Eisner endearingly replied: You ``should be so lucky as to have an Orlando in Virginia.''
Mr. Eisner speaks with the cockiness of a man who last year pulled $203 million in salary and stock options out of a company that saw its profit fall $500 million. Let him take his billions and go back to Hollywood and The Polo Lounge where they are impressed with such swagger.
by CNB