How the post office created America
The history of the post office is nothing less than the story of America. Of the nation’s founding institutions, it is the least appreciated or studied, and yet for a very long time was the U.S. government’s major endeavor. Indeed, it was the government in the eyes of most citizens. As radical an experiment as America itself, the post was the incubator for our uniquely lively, disputatious culture of innovative ideas and uncensored opinions. With astonishing speed, it established the United States as the world’ information-and-communications superpower...
...Since 1775, the post has responded to the nation’s changing needs—indeed, the institution’s advances had often helped precipitate them—but crises and budget-driven policy decisions have gradually, almost imperceptibly, erased America’s collective memory of what this dynamic institution has been and could still be. The people and their elected representatives, who must soon decide the post’s future, now know very little about the institution, past or present. It is time for Americans to learn more, particularly about the post’s modern history. Restoring the record of how the post made us the people that we are is important, both for this misunderstood, underappreciated institution and for the insights into American history and current affairs that it provides. These recurrent themes include the respective merits of public service and private enterprise, the limits of federal power and states’ rights, the rewards of public-private collaboration, the fruits of bipartisanship, the value of civic institutions, and the nation’s regional and political polarization.
The post deserves the effort to remember, because just as the founders had envisioned, it created America.
Link to full review
https://www.marketplace.org/2016/06/27/how-post-office-created-america/
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