I want the fewest possible people around me who were raised in a place in which government corruption is considered either unremarkable or consistent with traditional or acceptable norms. I want to deal as little as possible with folks who didn’t get told as children that all warrantless searches and seizures — of data or anything else — are illegal; who don't aspire to rugged individualism; or who harbor competing affections for any legal/political/philosophical tradition other than the one that inspired and informs the Declaration of Independence.
I’m OK with a handful on a citizenship path in America (and thus a path to voting, and possible public office) whose earliest and most deeply-embedded sensibilities were formed where graft is a feature of normal life; where “the rule of law” means nothing more than “the law of whoever is then in power;” or where the “presidency” is a lifetime office. If such immigrants join a society of unadulterated bedrock Americanism, to which they are only barely-noticeable exceptions, they — and more particularly their children — will be safely assimilated. But only if their numbers amount to no more than a ...
