Sipsey Street Irregulars: Source for the Three Percent?

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Source for the Three Percent?

Just received this email with a very pertinent question.

Dear Sir,

I just came across your blog by way of Xavier’s, and saw the mention of “Three Percenters,” which upon further reading I learned refers to the 3% said to have been the active resistance in the Revolution. I write because I have read about the three percent active resistance measure before in a different context, but I have not for the life of me been able to find it and was hoping you might know where I should look.

The quote I had read was from a military officer who was explaining the percentages necessary within a population necessary for the success of a guerrilla war/revolution. Those percentages broke down to three percent active resistance, 23% passive support, 50% neutral, (and maybe 25% active resistance?). If memory serves, the comments were in regards to some of the more recent wars (perhaps Vietnam) rather than the Revolution. It some number of years ago that I read it, before I had reached the point in my schooling to understand the necessity of keeping/identifying one’s sources for such a quote. As such, I have no idea what book it was in or the context or even if those numbers are the exact numbers given by the original source. As mentioned, I have searched the web for various combinations of words with no avail, and would greatly appreciate a source other than the “I read somewhere” that I could refer to when discussing these topics with
my friends.

Thank you greatly for any help,

Sincerely.

To which I replied:

Excellent question. I will find my original source (15 years old though it may be) and let you know, although I won't even begin looking until sometime after the first of the year when I finish with my novel. In the mean time, I can post your question on my blog and see if anyone else has a ready reference.

Mike
III

So, all you amateur Revolutionary historians out there, can you find a footnote for the man? If so, please post it here. Thanks.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: Something similar can be found in Revolutionary Strategy by EF Betancourt.; December 21, 2008 at 10:58 AM
Sean said...: Could've come out of Viet-Nam, where you had a 3% chance of being killed, wounded, or captured, if balanced against the total number people serving there. Contrasted with the 5% chance you had of getting killed on a highway, here in the US, during the same time period.; December 21, 2008 at 1:08 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Source for the Three Percent?

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