Bridge Builder : A Look Back at My First Term As Judge/Executive of Mccreary County, Kentucky

For too many years, generations of hard-working and trustworthy McCreary Countians had been led to believe that people who sat at desks in government offices were, somehow, inherently superior to other people. By virtue of their office, they were entitled to a level of respect not afforded to those who had elected them to office. This hold-over attitude, from the days when the Stearns Company was king, was, part and parcel, part of the reason why McCreary County had lagged behind its neighbors in development. Too many McCreary County people had, simply, been unwilling, or afraid, to hold their elected officials accountable. Too many McCreary Countians had been willing to accept, at face value, whatever their elected officials told them without asking any questions or expressing any doubts about the truth of what they were being told, at least not publicly. I believed, with all my heart, that private men not only have a right to meddle with government, but an obligation to do so. That was the fundamental principle upon which the American experiment in government was based. It was a principle that, the more I thought about it, the more I believed was overdue to make a re-appearance in McCreary County.