Wrong Question!!!

I passed the Guilford County Courthouse as I drove through downtown Greensboro the other morning and saw a herd of people lined up to go through the security checkpoint and gain access to their courthouse. Why do citizens tolerate this treatment from their government? Let's work through this logically. First we pay taxes to build the courthouse and staff it. Then, our elected officials decide that we should be searched before being allowed into our courthouse. Did anyone check with the voters before implementing this policy?? Of course not, they do what they want. I'm thinking that they failed the "democracy" part of Civics class.

I complained to a past county manager a few years ago about the search policy. He told me that the judges wanted the searches for "security purposes". I guess it hasn't dawned on judges that they are letting criminals have a free run in our society. Maybe if they were putting a few more criminals to work making license plates, we could walk the streets a little more safely.

After a few more stories about security issues from the manager, I explained my point of view to him. I explained that the whole security and search issue was a result of bad information. It is because, as Roger Von Oech likes to say, our officials are "asking the wrong question". They are sitting in the courthouse asking, "How do we keep those people from coming down here and hurting us?". What they should be asking is "What are we doing here that is pissing people off so badly that they want to come down here and hurt us?" It has been a few years, no answer from the county yet.