My friend Peter Levine starts a recent article with the famous Margaret Mead quotation that graces the walls and annual reports of a significant fraction of nonprofits:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” –Margaret Mead

He goes on to point out that the statement is not quite true, that large forces have changed the world, too. Just look at the fate of New Orleans.

(It reminds me of a passage in Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers in which a teacher points out to his students that the idea that “violence never settles anything” is absurd — just ask those defeated in a war, whose fates are often quite well settled.)

Peter, who takes pains to make sure we know he is not trying to take cheap shots at Margaret Mead, outlines some useful questions that it would be worthwhile to ask:

• When can “a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens” change the world?
• How can they be most effective?
• What are good means and good ends for these groups?

Excellent questions and the answers are not necessarily easy to come by. But they really must be addressed if we are to govern ourselves in a way that matches our ideals and rhetoric.

We are living at a time where the national conversation is embracing this notion of “committed citizens changing the world” in a way that it has not for some decades. But we need to move beyond what Peter calls “civic piety.” It’s very easy to mouth platitudes about “the people” and “working together” but actually getting the work of communities done takes more than talk.

But just as important, changing the way government views the role of citizens will take a huge amount of work. So far, the rhetoric has been right, but the results are not yet certain.

It’s counter intuitive that I would be thinking about the Federal government in juxtaposition to the Mead quote. But I would say it is exactly the right thing to be thinking about right now.

The government is offering “small groups of thoughtful, committed citizens” a lever in the form of a seat at the table of governance. The Open Government Initiative is a huge start. While it is up to these groups of thoughtful, committed citizens to figure out how to use that lever, it is also incumbent on the White House to make sure the seat is not actually at the kids’ Thanksgiving card table — marginalized.

So I would add this question to Peter’s:

• How can government make room for citizens’ voices, without giving up the responsibility to govern?