The AP reports suburban sprawl is endangering many Civil War battlefields.   I am, to a very small extent, a history buff.   I like to occasionally visit battlefield parks from the Revolutionary War and the Civil War as it helps me to visualize what our ancestors went through to preserve our freedom.   But how many battlefields do we need to preserve?

Preservation groups have saved 21,000 acres of battlefields in 19 states in the last few years.   21,000 acres?   That is a lot of land.   Would we remember what the war was about or what the soldiers went through better if that number were 100,000 or 1 million acres?   Isn't decent housing part of what makes this country great?   Why should we preserve millions of acres where a battle may have been fought as "sacred ground" while current citizens do without decent affordable housing?

Please don't take me the wrong way.   I don't advocate building residential or business space on every tiny spit of land.   I strongly believe there is an absolute need for park space including large wildlife preserves and some Revolutionary and Civil War memorial parks.   But we cannot continue to devote huge spaces to memories that aren't actually served by the preservation effort.   I don't have the figures for how much acreage is involved but when the numbers get this big, something is fundamentally wrong with the way we are thinking about things.