Bingo!!! And that is the problem. Perserving = regulation. Regulation kills property rights and property ownership. We are not paranoid out here for no reason though you seem to think we are. This is what everyone has been trying to tell you but you seem to get hung up on how you are different.
We see no difference betweem a heritage area and the NPS because it doesn't matter if you are the ones regulating or not, buying land ot not. You will cause regulation and that is tbe enemy of everyone here in the west.
Um we are prohibited by law from regulating any private property.
We can buy it, if we raise the money and pay a willing seller what they want. That is called the free market. That is conservative.
As for preservation being a bad thing, if it weren't for people who were interested in preservation, places like Gettysburg, Mount Vernon, Valley Forge and countless others would have been obliterated.
I have to wonder about people like you. You probably complain about how people don't have pride in being Americans anymore and they don't have respect for America's founding principles but you'd probably be the first in line to bulldoze Independence Hall if you could make a buck off of it.
I tell you what, when you die, I promise not to try to preserve any memory of what you accomplished, you believed or any aspect of your life. We can blot your memory from history and that can be your monument.