Guest Column: Why You Should Care About the Link 101 Corridor Project

Stop Link 101 stands firmly behind citizens who stand to lose everything they hold most dear, in exchange for a slightly faster route to US 50.

(Southeast Indiana) - “I don’t really care one way or the other.” We hear this phrase a lot, along with “Government is gonna do what government is gonna do.” While the Stop Link 101 movement fights to combat a lack of government transparency, massive overreach, fiscal irresponsibility, and environmentally unsound practices, the lesser known battle is that of simple indifference.

It’s the times I suppose, you look around at the state of our country and you can see the weariness on our faces. People rightfully feel that they are not being represented, that they continuously go unheard and unanswered. They feel deceived and cheated by those who were supposed to serve us, but who trade our trust and respect in for money and power. Evil roams unchecked. No one is ever held accountable. Why work and hope for representation when they will just stab you in the back?

Or perhaps it’s simply the human condition. We’ve worked hard for what we have, we feel justified in our resignation. Surely we deserve some peace? Just one minute of the day to call our own, to pretend everything is fine. We need that don’t we? To step back from the world, to separate ourselves from the madness and hold on to our little piece of rest. We’ve earned it, we need it, we tell ourselves. We hope and pray someone else will deal with the problems, or that somehow things will just sort themselves out. Hold on to what you have and let the world happen around you.

For whatever reason we choose to retreat to our stronghold, one day we turn around and discover that the problem has followed us there. It’s right under our noses, running unchecked through our community, because in our seclusion and indifference, we weren’t even looking for it. We call out for a savior, someone to put an end to the evil and corruption and reinstate liberty and justice! But they aren’t there, because we didn’t raise them. We didn’t create heroes because we didn’t want to be heroes. We just wanted to live the lives we wanted, to have some peace of mind, and we didn’t teach the next generation that freedom comes with a price. We didn’t show them that you have to get up everyday and fight a little for liberty and justice for all. It isn’t just something that happens, it is something we have to strive for continually, if even in our own small way. This is something our veterans and service members understand all too well and many have paid the ultimate price. For many of us this is something that looks much more ordinary and may seem much less significant, but it isn’t.

One day, the government will come for something that belongs to you, something you hold most dear. It may be your children, your home, your land, your family farm, your savings, your defense, but whatever it is you should rest assured that the community will rally around you and help you protect what is yours, because you did the same for them.

This is what the Stop Link 101 movement is truly about. Volunteers who get up everyday and sacrifice something of themselves and their families because we want to protect our community, because we understand that government must be continually held in check. You may not care about whether a highway gets built here or not, but the veteran next door with cancer does. You may think that we can’t stop the government once they’ve made up their minds, but if you don’t ever fight how will we ever know? You win some battles and you lose some. But if you don’t fight any battles then you surrender the war. If you don’t exercise your voice, you will lose it.

Stop Link 101 stands firmly behind citizens who stand to lose everything they hold most dear, in exchange for a slightly faster route to US Route 50. All while our well-travelled roads fall further into decay and the Indiana Department of Transportation sits solidly in the red. Eminent domain, in many cases, is theft perpetrated by the government, and we will not sit idly by while our friends and neighbors have their hard earned lives seized from them for a convenience project. We want the next generation to see that when government steps over the line, someone has to be there to push them back. Freedom isn’t free, and liberty is paid for by the small, everyday sacrifices of our country’s citizens.

We hope you will join us in our fight to protect our community. Please visit our website for more information at www.stoplink101.com.