> Truth v politics?
> Politics will almost always win.

Right. Especially when those with the national moral stature to stand up 
against the politics fail to stand up.

I still owe Jurretta Heckscher an explanation that she asked for, a summary 
telling why I express disappointment in historians who joined, whether or 
not consciously, with the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 
staying silent on the question of respecting sense of place at Fort Monroe. 
These include Adam Goodheart (an especially surprising case) and Douglas 
Brinkley, as well as the historians who participated in the special January 
2008 symposium about Fort Monroe--including Ed Ayers and other genuine 
luminaries.

True, Big Money and its politicians might have ignored them--same as Big 
Money and its politicians ignore
* the National Parks Conservation Association,
* nearly every attention-paying Tidewater citizen,
* the Virginian-Pilot on the left and and
* on the right even Tom Gear, the conservative Republican
   retired legislator who was honored by Citizens for a Fort
   Monroe National Park for his Fort Monroe leadership, and
   who calls what's happening a "land grab" by Hampton,
   giving us only a "phony"  national monument.
But even if historians of stature would have been ignored, they still should 
have spoken up.

Anyway, yes. Politics will _almost_ always win, true enough. But in the 
matter of America's treasured landscapes, if politics won every time, Ken 
Burns would have had no story to tell in his national parks series on PBS.

It's too late for Fort Monroe in Virginia, where the leaders were grimly set 
from the start. But it's not too late for the country itself to intervene.

 

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