What if our forefathers had that same attitude we would have never had the Constitution, nor the Bill of Rights. You can aways imagine something bad from such conventions, but I am sure that they had the same misgivings. If we do not have the courage of our convictions and in the good will of our neighbors then we are lost. Those men that wrote our founding documents were not in total agreement either when they past those documents. The Constitution was never thought to be perfect. That is why we had the Bill of Rights added afterwards.
Yes the ideals of people have changed from those of our forefathers. But are you saying that we have no "Statesmen" in our midst today? If so then Liberty is dead with the death of true Statesmenship.