One last time on the Big Stick.

Those who wield it most effectively, I've been writing, will run the show in Salem and Washington. Up until now that's been well-paid people we call lobbyists. I've been arguing that if we're as tired of that as we claim — if we in fact want our country back — we have three tasks: to "put together the biggest stick we can ... use it with intelligence and focus ... and commit to carrying it permanently." Earlier columns covered the first two. This one's about commitment. First I should note that the Big Stick Theory is getting creamed in the online forum. "Sorry, Jeff," went one entry, "but Democracy has failed "¦ a significant portion of the populace has learned that they can gain money from the public treasury at the expense of others "¦ The final pauperization of America has been achieved. The brief, shining moment of individual liberty — and its resulting prosperity and opportunity — has passed ... don't expect we who are being taken to waste our time listening to your schemes and dreams and promises of change and hope — we know better."

My question may sound snide, but it's honestly curious: What should we expect you to do? If you firmly believe there's no hope, then where to from here? It's true that the disaster of modern American governance lends more evidence to your hopelessness than my hope. That's not because the gods have decreed that corporations and other concentrated interests will rule the world. In the parlance of the theory I've been rolling out, it's because we've surrendered the Biggest Stick to a tiny class of players more focused and persistent than we are collectively. We the People haven't impressed the rule-makers with ingredient No. 3 of the Big Stick Theory: commitment.

Tell me if you've heard something like this before from, say, an opponent of the Iraq War: "I signed an online petition demanding that it stop. I wrote a letter to my member of Congress. Then when they were voting on another appropriation I even called his office and told them what I think. That was three years ago, and the war's still going! That proves the system doesn't work!" Sometimes I imagine Thomas Jefferson and his co-conspirators listening to us grump. You folks, they're saying, have been cruising too many fast-food drive-thrus and pumping too many ATMs. That's not quite how this Republic thing works. Maybe we should start by reviewing a little history "¦

The Founders conceived of citizenship not as an erratic string of tantrums, but as a way of life. Congress and state legislators take us less seriously than entrenched lobbies because, unlike lobbyists, we generally disappear after speaking our piece. They know that we'll go away and the guys from K Street won't.

Effective commitment isn't an abstraction. After articulating a short list of issues that can rally majorities across the old political divides (that's the "putting together the biggest stick we can" task as per the Feb. 14 and 21 columns, available at www.dailytidings.com), commitment demands a coordinated action plan. If the goal is, say, verifiable voting with a clear paper trail, 50 well-stated telephone calls and 40 original letters (not email signatures or form letters, which don't communicate commitment) will pour in to every congressional office every day. Twenty-five people with the same message will be ready to deliver it at every Town Hall meeting held by every member of Congress. And we don't stop until the legislation we want is passed and signed into law, a period of time that will shorten as we earn credibility as citizens who can't be ignored away.

Someone will write in that we've never seen citizenship like that. That's the point. This calls for collaboration instead of My Way or the Highway, discipline and persistence, none of which we've done well in at least half a century. These three qualities are much harder to cultivate than to name; if there's an easier way to get our country back, sign me up for that instead.

The Big Stick columns annoyed one reader with their "lack of focus on the larger issues such as the debt bomb ready to explode in our faces." But what's offered here is not an issue at all, but rather a framework for affecting any issue that matters. To use this one: Would you rather see trillions spent in ways that preserve the privilege of the global banking elite, or that rebuild communities, small business and responsible home ownership? While their hair's been mussed, the bankers still hold the Big Stick on this one.

Does that work for you? And if not "¦

Jeff Golden is the author of "Forest Blood," "As If We Were Grownups," and the recently released novel "Unafraid," with excerpts available at www.unafraidthebook.com.