The smallest particles have their influence

[ashling]

I was just looking through some books online that I have been reading and ones I want to get. I came across this article by one of the authors. I know it is a couple of years old, but it bears repeating.

it is about the importance of knowing our history, and about the organizing of revolutionaries and perhaps of political campaigns.

some of my favorite parts of the article:

the American patriots of 1773 and 1774 worked hard to promote unity. The 13 colonies could have broken up into small, squabbling units, an event that would have doomed effective military resistance to Great Britain. But rather than trumpeting narrow regional, ideological or class interests, ordinary patriots insisted on promoting a general American cause. They understood that it was only by working together that they could hold their own against the empire

. As the Rev. Nathaniel Niles of Massachusetts reminded parishioners in 1774, "The smallest particles have their influence. Such is our state, that each individual had a proportion of influence on some neighbor at least; he, on another, and so on; as in a river, the following drop urges that which is before, and every one through the whole length of the stream has the like influence."

So Americans ceded to the Continental Congress leadership in creating a national infrastructure of revolution. That body ordered each town and county to elect a committee to monitor the consumer boycott. This elaborate structure -- a framework for a creative conversation between national and local goals -- helped sustain a rule of law.

Modern Americans owe a tremendous debt to the ordinary patriots who launched an insurgency that became a revolution that brought independence. Simply put, without them there would be no United States. The minimum repayment is to know their history. Anyone wishing to cloak present-day complaints in that early generation's sacrifice ought to understand how it managed during a severe political crisis to bring forth a new republic dedicated to rights, equality and liberty.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/30/AR2010033003252.html