(From the Persuasion Power Point section in Volume 18, No. 20 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!)
“Why are you even bothering to support the Advocates?” asks your friend. “Your support is only a drop in the bucket.”
“Why are you volunteering to work at an Operation Politically Homeless booth?” asks your college roommate.
“One day at an OPH booth and you might help 40 or 50 people recognize that they lean libertarian – but that’s just a drop in the bucket.”
“Why are you forwarding Liberator Online articles to a dozen friends and coworkers?” asks one of your recipients.
“Even if you win one person over to libertarianism – it’s only one person. Just a drop in the bucket.”
“Only a drop in the bucket” means tiny, trivial, insignificant, can’t-make-a-difference, a waste of time… futile!
“Only a drop in the bucket” is intended to needle you, push your buttons, embarrass you, and make you feel stupid for doing what you’re doing. It’s designed to goad you into STOPPING what you’re doing.
But the “only a drop in the bucket” objection forgets that some small actions are independently powerful and have a huge impact. One small stone from David’s sling brought down Goliath. One small glass of water can save the life of a man dying of thirst. One square inch of Kevlar can save the life of a police officer.
More. One small action can set in motion massive consequences. One last snowflake can trigger an avalanche. A final straw can break a camel’s back.
CNBC’s Rick Santelli’s five-minute 2/19/09 economic rant from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange ignited the Tea Party movement.
More. One small action by one person PLUS one small action by others can total up to something far bigger. Buckets can be slowly – or very quickly – filled by such drops.
How many drops does it take to fill a one-gallon bucket? Drop sizes vary.
Depending on the size of the drop, it takes between 75,708 drops and 90,840 drops to fill a one-gallon bucket.
Using the 90,840 drops in a gallon number, if every subscriber to the Liberator Online puts “only one libertarian drop in the bucket” into that bucket, today, tomorrow, and the next day – we will overflow the bucket in less than three days. You and I and our fellow Liberator Online readers ALONE can overfill 141 one-gallon buckets every year.
And… we are NOT alone. There are all the activist libertarians in the Libertarian Party PLUS roughly 400,000 registered Libertarian voters in America. PLUS the millions of young libertarians who campaigned and voted for Ron Paul for president in 2012. PLUS the 15,700,000 votes that were cast for Libertarian Party candidates in 2012. Plus the libertarian campus organizations blossoming across America. PLUS the thousands who support CATO and Reason and the Independent Institute and FreedomFest. And the blogs, the newsletters, the podcasts, the videos, the letters to editors…
Your “one libertarian drop in the bucket” each day or week helps fill bucket after bucket after bucket for liberty.
And gets us closer and closer to freedom in our time.
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