On a moonlit night in April 1775, Paul Revere rode through Massachusetts with a warning — “The British are coming” — as English troops advanced toward Lexington and Concord.
The episode became one of the defining stories of America’s founding. Yet Revere’s ride succeeded for a reason deeper than the courage of a single messenger. The colonies understood the British threat. Revere’s warning provided urgency and timing, not persuasion. Americans acted collectively because they largely agreed on the underlying reality.
For much of the nation’s history, American institutions operated on a simple assumption: If enough people received the same information, most would arrive at roughly the same understanding of events. That shared understanding of reality became a form of national infrastructure. Markets depended on it to price risk and allocate capital. Businesses depended on it to plan and invest with confidence. Democracies depended on it to sustain legitimacy and public trust…