Long Live the Revolution!

Perpetual revolution isn’t just for Communists.

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NOTE: Within this text, wherever gender is not key to the explanation, I am using the Elverson (ey/em) pronouns (they/them : remove the “th” for singular).

While writing the U.S. Constitution, the founders referred to their endeavor as “a great experiment”. Their plan, to write a design document that would codify a government based on a twenty-year-old design by Montesquieu and then implement it was unheard-of, untested, and unproved. That experiment began in the mid-1780s and what were the results? What did we conclude from that experiment regarding a representative democracy based upon the Montesquieu branches? We have concluded nothing! Like the famous pitch drop experiment in Queensland, our experiment is ongoing. There are revelations, discoveries, and lessons learned but there is no conclusion. We still don’t know if this will work.

The original design was so slap-dash that it had to be amended only a few years later with the Bill of Rights. Then it was amended a few more times until the Civil War which inspired three more amendments fundamentally altering this traditional slave-based experiment into a more covert slave-based experiment. Then there were more amendments giving voting rights to women, allowing the public to elect their senators, proposing still-untested ways to deal with an incapacitated President. The experiment continues and has never been stable enough to be declared complete.

That means that this is an experiment in which you and I are participating right now. It began in revolution as white male landowners (many of them slaveholders) overthrew the oppression of King George. The rights that it protected were greatly expanded after quelling the revolt of the Confederacy, and then those rights were quickly constricted by a rebellious South under the hesitant hand of a timid Congress. The economy crashed a few times, the wealthy oligarchs ruled in the 1920s, relented in the 1930s, settled for just-more-than-enough for forty years, and then began their fifty year conspiracy to overthrow this constitutional republic culminating in the current dismantling of the democratic order.

From revolution to revolution, we have seen this republic change but not end — not yet.

If this is an experiment and we are part of it and revolution brings change, then we need to enjoin this revolution. The weapon of the insurrection is information in the form of lie after lie making the truth entirely unbelievable. It’s an old technique. The weapon of the revolution must be truth, delivered with clarity and directed at the palpable needs of the listener as do many Progressive candidates.

All wars are information wars.

Voice the Constitution©

Since 2008, my spouse and I have been facilitating live readings of the U.S. Constitution in libraries, bookstores and pubs.

[Pubs, you say? Yes. The Constitution goes down a little easier with a good ale. We let the brewmaster read the 21st Amendment.]

For almost twenty years we’ve guided people of all ages from the inspiring Preamble through the star-studded signatures to the surprising conclusion of the Twenty-Seventh Amendment. We find out who wants to read and we then divide up the sixty-one 5 ½ X 8 cards among those readers. Each reader gets a number, and starting with #1, which is always your author, we read our Constitution all the way through.

We do not discuss current affairs, only the Constitution and its history. It takes about one hour to read the document and there are from thirty minutes to an hour of discussion. When everyone leaves, they know a half dozen things they didn’t know before and, most importantly, they have a renewed sense of agency. This is their Constitution. They have read it and they understand it better than most of the commentators they see on YouTube.

By the way, if you think you might want to facilitate your own Voice the Constitution, you can download the complete kit from https://thegreatcollaboration.org.

The gatherings have always been congenial. By avoiding the issues of the day, we are free to explore the words of the document and the biographies of the founders and the historical understanding of the Constitution as it evolved through the life of the republic. For example, while reading Article Three, I will often ask if there are any fans of Frank Herbert’s book *Dune in the audience. There is usually at least one and I will explain the part where the federal judges shall “hold their Offices during good Behavior.” That part of the judge’s job description is based upon the Act of Settlement of 1701 wherein it was declared that the Crown’s judges shall hold their offices (in Latin) quamdiu se bene gesserint which means “while they are well behaved”. The Dune fans learn that Herbert was inspired by that Latin phrase and that the name for the cult of priestesses he calls the [Bene Gesserit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bene_Gesserit)* is just the singular of that Latin phrase which means simply “one who is well behaved”.

A Change of Tone

Under the second Trump administration, we are seeing the occasional very unusual response. At our very first Voice the Constitution at Blue Owl Books in Nederland, Colorado, we had an enthusiastic crowd of liberal friends and several other folks we did not know. Everyone asked questions and commented as the reading was going on. As everyone was leaving, one of the attendees thanked me for facilitating the event and handed me his business card. He was literally a “card-carrying” libertarian who formally teaches people the libertarian philosophy.

It doesn’t matter that my interpretation of the Constitution is not consistent with the Libertarian philosophy. That Libertarian had experienced the Constitution within his own frame of reference and found value in his new understanding. That is the point of these readings.

Recently, though, we have experienced audience-members and even readers who did not merely watch, but glared. A few of them left about half-way through and one of them acted in a manner we had never seen before. This person read eir portion of the Constitution well and returned to eir seat. At the end I asked if there were any more questions and since this person seemed to be focusing on me with unusual intensity, I looked at em and asked directly, “Do you have any questions?”

Voice quavering as if under stress, ey responded, “More questions than you can imagine.”

I paused, waiting for one, and after several seconds, I asked, “What question is on top?”

Ey responded, “No. No. I can’t.”

Seeing eir discomfort, I moved on and took other questions. When it was over, I called out as I always do, “Long live the revolution!” As everyone was leaving, our uneasy attendee remained seated. Ey turned to my spouse and firmly asked, “Why do you do this?” to which Janette responded, “We just think that people should know what’s in the Constitution.” At that, ey left.

Ongoing Routine Revolution

What was that person thinking? It seems unlikely that the content of the Constitution provided comfort or confirmation of current beliefs. I think the response would have been very different for that. This seemed more like a person who was frustrated or deeply conflicted about the reading. Every resident of the United States has some understanding, perhaps merely guesses, regarding the supreme law of our land. Everyone who attends a Voice the Constitution learns something they didn’t previously know about the Constitution, but I have never seen anyone so clearly upset by the experience.

What was that person expecting? What hope was left unfulfilled? Was it the no religious test clause? Was it the necessary-and-proper clause? Was it my explanation of oath versus affirmation wherein it became clear that no one was required to swear on a Bible? Was it the first clause in the Second Amendment which ey may not have heard before? I have no idea. Perhaps the Constitution failed by not being Progressive enough. Nonetheless, now, in 2026 in Rochester, New York, our Voice the Constitution is clearly upsetting some people.

Is that good? Are those people going home and diving deep into the wealth of literature about U.S. history or are they desperately rereading the regressive, racist literature that had always comforted them in the past? Are they contacting Indivisible and learning how they can participate more fully in the honorable resistance or are they turning to YouTube proclamations by James Carville and other ultra-moderate frozen fixtures who reinforce their passive ignorance? I do not know, but I suspect that in times of stress, people do things that they would not normally do.

We have a therapist friend who (revealing no details, of course) told us that her MAGA patients are as frightened as everyone else. With Trump’s second win, these cult followers who should have been rejoicing in their victory, remained afraid of the glorious future that they had successfully constructed. Whether right or left, MAGA or Marxist, everyone seems to be afraid. Maybe some of our attendees are grasping for some kind of confirmation or reassurance that they believed would be in the Constitution but isn’t.

The actual direct experience of our U.S. Constitution is simply a face-to-face meeting with the original design of our form of government. Inasmuch as learning is fun, our readings are interesting and inspiring but we discuss both the innovation and the commonplace encoded into this document. We discuss the bravery and the cowardice, the honor and the sad failings. The Constitution is inspiring only when it is read as a foundation for a future that we must build, amplifying the good and correcting the mistakes. Our best hope is that those who attend a Voice the Constitution will leave with the belief that this 240 years of experience must wisely inform the next steps in this ongoing experiment. This system is not yet stable. The revolution must be ongoing as a determined project to build a conceivable future that may serve our founders’ demand for life, liberty and the actual achievable possibility of frequent happiness.

Long live the revolution!

Julian S. Taylor is the author of *Famine in the Bullpen* a book about bringing innovation back to software engineering. Available at or orderable from your local bookstore.

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Also available in ebook and audio formats at Sockwood Press.