| Description |
in 1989, Lee Sannus, a California land developer purchased Brandy Station, Virginia, an historically important piece of property, and began plans to develop. This paper argues against such development because of the impact to the Culpepper County community, its values and way of life. These intrinsic elements forge specific attachments that results in security, happiness and pride for the residents. Because of the historic and symbolic character of Brandy Station, the site of a crucial Civil War battle, citizens throughout America are also abstractly drawn into the Culpepper community. Development, by severing attachments cultivated by history, tradition and honor at Brandy Station, retard the aims, goals and actions of Culpepper residents and Americans alike. By looking at the political writings of Thomas Jefferson and John C. Calhoun, the foundations of community and the community's importance to government are illustrated. Jefferson and Calhoun both stipulate the necessity of land (the element of cohesion in their communities) in order to have a virtuous citizenry and good government. Like land, the preserved history at Brandy Station is an element of cohesion necessary for maintaining community ties and producing virtue. In order for these ties be preserved, as argued by Michael Sandel, a contemporary political theorist, a politics based on the result of strengthening community must precede a conception of justice that emphasizes equal treatment under a set of value-neutral rights or, in the case of the land dispute, property rights. Examples that support the negative effect of development to Culpepper County include a loss of self-government s displayed by current development trends and a division of interests, already forming with the prospect of development to Brandy Station. These negative effects are in juxtaposition to the effects (cohesion, happiness and pride ) of a politics aimed at strengthening the community - preservation, in the case of Brandy Station. |
