Government intervention leads only to resentment. If you want people to despise their heritage, then get the government involved with 'preserving' it through regulation and so on. If you want people to appreciate their heritage, then bother to inform them why it is important. teach them their history in school, inform them via public and private means of why things should be preserved. Show them who their ancestors were, and what they did.

The only government intervention I am in favor of is supplying funding to individuals and organizations who educate, and maybe to those who preserve and revitalize. Any regulatory intervention will only cause trouble.

Guess you can tell I come from a race of people who despise government intervention in any form...

That said, I think our heritage is very important -individual heritage being the most important, but most difficult to teach. Things will be preserved only if we nurture a love and appreciation of that heritage. The best way to pass on such a love is to yourself have that love, and live it out. I think most of us as timber framers and such do a good job of that.

Spent the afternoon this Saturday at a living history museum about an hour from my place, it's exiting to me to see that an organization like this exists, and has done so much for our state. These are the kinds of things we need, not big brother stepping in and telling me I can't knock down an old barn that cannot function anymore so I can build a new one, or telling my neighbor he can't remodel his house, etc...

I did take the survey, by the way. My biggest concern is that a person with opinions like mine can't really express that the way things are set up. It seams to me that this survey suggests you are either for preservation and so for government regulation, or else you are against regulation and so against preservation. Not so.

Also, I detect a little bias against us country folk, as half the questions are about 'the city you live in'!