There were hundreds of fantastically important success stories in the United States government. They just never got told. Max knew an astonishing number of them. He’d detected a pattern: a surprising number of the people responsible for them were first-generation Americans who had come from places without well-functioning governments. People who had lived without government were more likely to find meaning in it. On the other hand, people who had never experienced a collapsed state were slow to appreciate a state that had not yet collapsed.
