Whether this Constitution is a good Constitution are not does not depend entirely on whether it was good at the time of the Founding. In fact, it might not have been good enough at the time of the Founding to be legitimate for the very reason that it allowed certain people to be subordinated and other people to be enslaved. The Constitution that we have today is a Constitution that has been amended. It's been amended by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. It's that Constitution that we have to ask, is it good enough to merit a duty of obedience? If you think the Constitution, as amended, is a good framework for government, then you want to follow it. If you don't think the Constitution is a good framework for government, then obviously you're going to look for ways of "interpreting it" to actually change or avoid its real meaning. What about the argument that we should not be bound by the dead hand of the past? Well, I, for one, agree with that argument. I don't think we should be bound by the dead hand of the past. The reason to be an Originalist is because we today, we the living; we, here and now; believe in this Constitution and following the text of this Constitution. The text of this Constitution means what it meant when it was adopted unless it was properly changed since then. For example, the 14th Amendment means what it meant in 1868. The other Amendments mean what they meant when they were adopted. It's because we here today, we the living, want to be bound or believe we should be bound by a written constitution to provide a law that governs those that govern us that we follow the original meaning of the text.