Rally for Route 66!

Keep up the fight for the Mother Road! Rally for Route 66!

There is a lot at stake in preserving this irreplaceable monument to American history, not merely as a tourist attraction but as a means to permitting a glimpse into our past, as a means to virtual time-travel into a time and space otherwise inaccessible, as a means to capturing the imaginations of future generations and to preserving the memory of our forbears in both form and spirit. 

We are nothing without reverence for our forbears, without our heritage or our identity as a people, without the preserved memory of our history. Without these reminders, without the tangible connections to our past and the efforts which have forged our path and come to define us, without these monuments to the pioneering and the innovative, we are destined to forget all of that which makes us uniquely human, all of that which has afforded us so much insight and abundance, all of that which has given us pause to reflect and remember and to appreciate the struggles and the sacrifices, the triumphs and the achievements of our kind, to appreciate precisely what is at stake in the living we make; and we are thereby without the identity and the purpose which lend some measure of meaning to our lives and permanence to our efforts, which enable us to place a proper price on the blessings we have inherited. 

The preservation of material history is a complex issue, to be sure, and an issue which carries a price; it is less complex to the historian, of course, but complex and costly nonetheless. However, the costs of not considering the consequences are incalculable. They are, indeed, eternal. 

It is an issue not necessarily solved by additional laws against all future development, not necessarily solved by inflexible impediments to future innovations which better serve future generations and reward their own resourcefulness, which give them a personal sense of pride, purpose and fulfillment, and which stand to permit them to take part in the story and to make their own history. However, where those laws are to safeguard the heritage and the interests of the affected parties, where they are to implement further restraints on government insofar as they can succeed in keeping that government accountable to the public and the relevant parties, it is essential, indeed it is our duty as the keepers of all that is sacred and all that shall remain for our heirs, to take such measures. 

More important than laws is the pride of the people in their heritage and their identity. We are nothing without reverence for our forbears, as our best efforts are ultimately in vain where they are met with equal indifference into the future. For this reason, I encourage all to sign this petition to save an integral segment of Route 66, the Mother Road, the testament to the twentieth-century pioneers who represent what it means to be an American, and by that what it means to be the architects of our own lives and the free-willed possessors of our own destiny; what it means to continually expand our horizons, to endeavor undeterred into the unknown, to strive freely and to make one's way on one's own merits, and to rise like a phoenix from the dust and the darkness upon him. 

It is the pioneer who stands tall, who has often had to stand alone on the prairie, on the open road and in the face of adversity, who yet perseveres and strives for the betterment of his lot in life and the circumstances of his family, who makes every effort and suffers every burden to this end, who makes the American and indelibly marks the pages of a history worth remembering and a legacy worth honoring. Through this, we have direction and we keep our sacred honor, and whenever we find ourselves lost, we can always retrace our steps to the old trail to remember our way. That is our cause in everything we do, and that is the cause before us. Do your part. It is up to you to take action, and it is up to you to decide the future that we will have and the one that our heirs are destined to inherit.