(Editor’s note: This is the 9th of 10 articles serializing Executive Editor Michael Ryan’s ebook YouRule: How Saving America Depends Entirely on You And What You Can Do About It.)

Oh, right. About our friend Gregory Watson. Remember [from YouRule! Article 2]? The guy who changed the U.S. Constitution?

Watson was a college student at the University of Texas in the early 1980s when a professor assigned her class to write a term paper on a governmental process. He chose the process least used and most difficult: amending the Constitution.

He initially thought of writing about the Equal Rights Amendment, which was being considered at the time. But in a book he found listing constitutional amendments that had been proposed but not passed over the years, he discovered one that would prohibit a sitting Congress from voting itself a pay raise—providing, instead, that any congressional pay raise would take effect in the next Congress.

Watson thought that was a splendid idea, so he wrote about it. He got a C on the paper.

Then, properly agitated by the grade, he set out to show his teacher a thing or two by getting the amendment passed. And by gosh, he did it—making all sorts of long-distance calls back when long-distance calls cost a pretty penny, and writing on his electric typewriter and doggedly mailing letters to various state legislators around the country, long before emailing, to encourage the amendment’s passage.

Some state legislators, embarrassingly ignorant of the states’ role in amending the Constitution (see Article V), told Watson to quit bothering them with something that wasn’t their business. He didn’t. And by 1992, three-fourths of the states had ratified it, and the national archivist declared it the 27th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Gregory Watson won.

It’s an astounding feat of citizenship, civics and old-fashioned pigheadedness. It’s even more amazing when you consider who first proposed the amendment:

James Madison.

How to celebrate amending the U.S. Constitution

That’s right. It was one of the first 12 amendments—10 of which became our Bill of Rights. The other two slipped into obscurity. One of the two was about how many members of Congress there should be. It died a blessed death, as it would have ballooned the body as the American population grew, and the last thing we need, other than another pandemic, is more congresspeople running around.

The other amendment, of course, was rescued by that Texas college student Gregory Watson we all now know about.

When the two of us met a few years ago, I insisted on knowing how Watson celebrated ratification. After some hemming and hawing, he finally guessed that he might’ve bought himself a steak dinner that night. You see, it’s a bittersweet memory for him, because he recalls the ever-preening peacocks of congressional leadership taking credit for the amendment, which they had little to do with and most likely opposed anyway.

And because of the Constitution, members of Congress had nothing to say about it.

Maybe the most beautiful part of the story? Many years later, his teacher officially changed the grade on Watson’s paper from C to A.

The most important part of the story, though, is what one dedicated, civic-minded person can accomplish in a self-governed country. Gregory Watson’s story should serve as an inspiration to us all—and maybe as a kick in the behind. Understand that, as an empty church preaches the Gospel to no one, a self-governed nation is a hollow vessel if its congregation of free people doesn’t show up.

Close your eyes and feel not only the urgency of this country’s dilemma and your role in righting it, but also the momentous, miraculous responsibility you’ve inherited. Then open your eyes and heart to the soaring nobility of the citizen-sovereign, and the divine providence that undoubtedly gave rise to it.

To paraphrase Clarence the angel in the film It’s A Wonderful Life, you’ve been given a great gift: The chance to see what this country would be like with you helping run it.

“Most of us don’t understand the idea of self-government enough to be properly astonished by it,” Eric Metaxas stirringly writes in his book If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty.

Choose to be different. Be informed. Be involved. Be astonished.

Remember: You rule.

Next: The Do-It-Yourself Potentate: 10 Easy Things You Can Do to Save America.

About the Author

Michael F. Ryan is executive editor of The Heartlander, as well as a longtime newspaper journalist and editorial writer, frequent speaker, and author of the international novel The Last Freedom on Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl.

His award-winning work has appeared in newspapers and magazines since the 1980s, as he has made a decades-long study of civic engagement and its decline.

The full YouRule! ebook is available for 99 cents at either BookBaby or Amazon.